Arab Americans were part of the reason the Hate Crime Statistics Act passed in 1990.

There was a historic hearing held in 1985 after the murder of Alex Oda, the incredible Arab American civil rights hero who was killed in his office at the ADC office in California.

The FBI director back then literally

referred to Arabs or those holding Arab views as being within the quote unquote zone of

danger. That was how we got in some ways to the Hate Crime Statistics Act passing is this

understanding that there is this problem in our country,

and we need to gather better data about it in order to inform our policy.

That happens in 1990.

The first time the hate crime data collection is reported in 1991, and when it was created,

there was Code 31, which is the anti-Arab category.

The anti-Arab category was completely eliminated.

It disappeared from the data collection.

It was not reintroduced until 2015.

And according to your website, you're also, I'm going to quote here, a long-time Democratic Party activist

who served as a member of the 2016 Democratic National Convention's Platform Standing Committee,

close quote.

Is that correct?

That's correct.

Okay.

You support Hamas, do you not?

Senator, oddly enough, I'm going to say thank you for that question because it demonstrates

the purpose of our hearing today in a very effective way.

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