W.House condemns Fox News over ‘sickening attack’ on Arab Americans
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In a statement to The Guardian, the White House deputy press secretary calls the Fox News host's comments "unacceptable".
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White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates speaks as Director of the Office of Management and Budget Shalanda Young in Washington, D.C., on March 28, 2022. (AFP)
After Fox News channel’s host, Jesse Watters advocated violence against Arab Americans, a White House spokesperson called on the news channel to apologize to its viewers.
Watters said on the Fox show 'The Five', on Wednesday evening, "If you’re an Arab American in this country, and you rip down posters of Jewish hostages, American hostages, no. No, no, no. Someone is going to get punched in the face.”
The White House deputy press secretary, Andrew Bates, said in a statement sent to The Guardian that Watters’ remarks were “unacceptable”, adding that "Fox News owes an apology to every single viewer for this sickening attack on the rights and dignity of their fellow Americans.”
Watters added: “I want to say something about Arab Americans and about the Muslim world. We – and when I say we I mean the West and Western technology – have created the Middle East. We made them rich. We got that oil out of the ground, our military protects all of these oil shipments flying around the world, making them rich. We fund their military. We respect their kings. We kill their terrorists. OK? But we’ve had it. We’ve had it with them!”
'Hate has no safe harbor in America'
In response, Bates said: “These hateful lies about ‘Arab Americans and … the Muslim world’ highlight the urgency of President Biden’s work to ensure hate has no safe harbor in America, and why he committed to the first national anti-Islamophobia strategy in our history.”
He also pointed to the recent hate crime in Plainfield, Illinois, in which Wadea Al-Fayoume, aged six, was stabbed to death in an attack his mother survived.
According to the Will County Sheriff’s Office, authorities were called on reports that a woman was being attacked by her landlord with a knife. Authorities said the woman told police that she ran into the bathroom while fighting off her attacker and dialed 911.
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After arriving at the scene, police found a man sitting near the driveway with a laceration to his forehead. Deputies then found the 32-year-old woman Hanaan Shahin and her son Wadea al-Fayoume with over a dozen stab wounds to the chest, torso, and upper extremities.
A family friend said the attacker shouted “you Muslims have to die” and “you are killing our kids in Israel. You Palestinians don’t deserve to live.”
Bates said Watters’ “… unacceptable remarks come just weeks after the heartbreaking killing of a six-year-old Palestinian American child, and during a spike in threats against Muslim and Arab Americans," adding that “Fox News owes an apology to every single viewer for this sickening attack on the rights and dignity of their fellow Americans. President Biden will always stand up against Islamophobia, antisemitism, and all forms of hate. Fox News should learn from his example.”
CSOs condemn hate speech against Palestinians
On a similar note, civil society and human rights organizations on October 14 called for protective measures to combat racism against Palestinians and discrimination against their online content, highlighting the interconnection between the digital world and the real world.
"Between the 7th and the 11th of October, the Arab Center for Social Media Development documented 19,000 violent tweets out of 23,000 tweets in Hebrew on the 'X' platform. This violent content included incitement, hate speech, and racism against Palestinians. On the other hand, misleading information and false information are spreading on social media, contributing to dehumanizing Palestinians and creating a stereotypical image of them. Additionally, some official Israeli pages praised violence and justified attacks against civilians," the statement read.
The United States has a history of hate crimes against not only Muslims but also other ethnicities. This is not the first time television channels or individuals have promoted hate and violence against a specific religion or ethnicity.
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Earlier this year, a report released by the FBI on March 14 shows that over 10,000 cases of hate crimes were reported during 2021, amounting to an 11.6% overall increase and a 31% increase from the year before.
In 2021, 64.5% of victims were targeted on account of their race or ethnicity, as the report noted that African Americans constituted the largest number of victims. According to a separate analysis, anti-Black crimes were followed by those against white people, Jews, and Asians. The FBI also registered 152 hate crimes against Muslims. This new data marks the first time the FBI has confidently and publicly reported hate crimes since it began using a new data collection system.
Just a thought - Could the United States' efforts at advocating against hate crimes only be to preserve its image?
