Yves right here. Wowsers. RFK Jr. demonstrates the diploma to which Trump group members will shame themselves for the trigger. Even the inept and incompetent Scott Bessent was a bit much less so earlier than he determined to have Treasury fall in with the Trump/Hegseth bullying as technique.
Not solely did RFK Jr., a person with worms in his mind, deny important mental contributions by Arabs (Palestine alone has produced Mahmoud Darwish, Edward Mentioned, Ibrahim Fawal, and Suad Amiry) however he pooh poohed their scientific/technical prowess. Un, these sandal-wearing Ansar Allah forces are very expert at what the West likes to name innovation in addition to manufacturing, as demonstrated by their largely indigenous drone and missile program. Underestimate these brown folks at your peril.
By Julia Conley, a senior editor and workers author for Frequent Desires. Initially revealed at Frequent Desires
Visiting the state with the highest proportion of Arab Individuals to marketing campaign for the Republican US Senate candidate, every week earlier than the midterm elections throughout a marketing campaign by which folks from throughout the political spectrum have recoiled on the GOP’s racist, misogynist rhetoric, the Trump administration’s prime well being official opted to share a fact-free non sequitur about lots of of thousands and thousands of Arabs throughout the globe.
Apparently making an attempt to promote voters in Michigan on Republican former Rep. Mike Rogers, who was behindDemocratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed by two factors in a current Marist ballot—and by six factors amongst independents—Well being and Human Providers Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. opined on “500 million Arabs on the planet,” an enormous inhabitants that he prompt contributes little to the worldwide neighborhood.
“They don’t produce science, they don’t win the Nobel Prize, they don’t win the Fields prize, they don’t win the Wolf Prize, they don’t produce literature,” declared Kennedy at a marketing campaign occasion in Grand Rapids.
RFK: “There’s 5 hundred million Arabs on the planet. And but they don’t produce science. They don’t win the Novel Prize. They don’t win the Fields Prize. They don’t win the Wolf Prize. They don’t produce literature.” https://t.co/ikZHqklQjE
— Bulwark Clips (@BulwarkClips) October 26, 2026
The feedback provoked horror amongst quite a few Democratic lawmakers, advocacy teams, scientists, and journalists, lots of whom had been fast to level out that Kennedy’s racist rant had no foundation in actuality.
“In addition to being nakedly racist and bigoted, that is simply hilariously unsuitable on all ranges,” stated Justin Baragona of Zeteo Information.
Baragona was among the many observers who didn’t have attain far again in historical past to show Kennedy, who has been broadly condemned for his rejection of scientific proof as he has questioned the protection of vaccines, completely unsuitable about Arab folks’s contributions to the sphere.
Simply final yr, Omar Yaghi received the Nobel Prize in chemistry for the event of metal-organic frameworks. Yaghi was born in Jordan to Palestinian refugee dad and mom. He additionally received the Wolf Prize, a global award for achievements in sciences and the humanities, in 2018, for his contributions to the sphere of reticular chemistry.
Vaccine scientist Peter Hotez expressed reduction that his late colleague and “sensible co-US Science Envoy,” the Egyptian-American chemist Ahmed Zewail, “didn’t must endure” listening to Kennedy’s feedback. Zewail received the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1999.
Entrepreneur Saad Mohseni listed various different “Arab science giants” who got here to thoughts.
Arab science giants:
* Ibn al-Haytham – father of optics * Al-Kindi – invented cryptanalysis * Al-Zahrawi – father of surgical procedure * Ibn al-Nafis – mapped pulmonary circulation * Al-Battani – measured the photo voltaic yr * Ibn al-Shatir – pre-Copernican astronomy * Ibn Khaldun – father of sociology
Nobel science laureates of Arab heritage: * Peter Medawar 🇱🇧 – Medication ’60, transplant immunology * E.J. Corey 🇱🇧 – Chemistry ’90, natural synthesis * Ahmed Zewail 🇪🇬 – Chemistry ’99, femtochemistry * Moungi Bawendi 🇹🇳 – Chemistry ’23, quantum dots * Omar Yaghi 🇯🇴🇵🇸 – Chemistry ’25, MOFs— Saad Mohseni (@saadmohseni) October 27, 2026
Baragona additionally pointed to 2 winners of the Nationwide Ebook Award simply final yr—the Lebanese author and painter Rabih Alameddine and Egyptian-American journalist Omar El Akkad.
However US Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) prompt that past debunking Kennedy’s wholly inaccurate declare, “everybody wants to concentrate” to what his feedback had been a part of: a “coordinated marketing campaign to delegitimize Muslim Individuals—not simply as residents however as people.”
“These more and more hysterical assaults are a prelude to Republicans bringing us to a really, very darkish place after the election,” stated Murphy.
The Council on American Islamic Relations demanded that Kennedy be faraway from his Cupboard place in gentle of the remarks, which they known as “a textbook show of unvarnished racism and bigotry.”
“To face on a public stage as a sitting US Cupboard official and dehumanize half a billion folks—and thousands and thousands of Muslim and Christian Arab Individuals—with fabricated, white supremacist speaking factors is completely disqualifying for public workplace,” stated the group. “His sweeping erasure of Arab contributions to humanity isn’t solely maliciously false, nevertheless it additionally followers the flames of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hate at a time when communities are already susceptible to bigoted assaults from different public officers nationwide. Anybody who holds such blatant contempt for a complete ethnicity has no enterprise main a federal company meant to serve all Individuals.”
Journalist Mehdi Hasan, the founding father of Zeteo Information, prompt that the Democratic Social gathering and liberal commentators deserve a big share of the blame for a political setting by which a prime US official felt comfy brazenly degrading lots of of thousands and thousands of individuals of Arab descent, together with an estimated 3.7 million Arab Individuals, as non-contributing members of society.
“Day by day, a outstanding Republican—the president, a Cupboard official, a primetime Fox host, the Michigan Senate candidate—says one thing insanely racist about Muslims or Arabs. In the meantime, my timeline is stuffed with outstanding Democrats and liberals getting mad a couple of random advert attacking Israel and screaming about antisemitism,” he stated, referring to an advert lately launched by Revolt political motion committee, which criticized US assist to Israel and tied it to Individuals’ struggles with the rising price of residing.
From many liberal commentators, stated Hasan, he has heard “crickets… on the out-of-control Islamophobia from the GOP.”
Kennedy’s anti-Arab feedback had been hardly an outlier within the Michigan Senate marketing campaign. Rogers and President Donald Trump have each accused El-Sayed of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, even though in 2012, as a congressman, Rogers himself stated he was prepared to work with the motion. The president has brazenly known as the Michigan-born El-Sayed a “jihadist,” and a speaker at one Rogers rally over the weekend stated the candidate’s beginning certificates didn’t make him an American.
However outstanding Democrats have additionally had a hand in pushing the narrative that El-Sayed is a dangerous alternative for Michiganders. Former state Democratic Social gathering chair Lon Johnson accused El-Sayed of “extremism” final week and stated his criticism of Israel threatens Jewish communities, calling on Democrats within the state to “depart the Senate race clean.” Throughout the major, the centrist suppose tank Third Manner spent months attacking El-Sayed for campaigning with in style streamer Hasan Piker, who as soon as stated that the US “deserved” the September 11 assaults—a remark he later clarified and apologized for.
At Defend Our Care, an advocacy group that usually focuses on Kennedy’s assaults on public well being, president Brad Woodhouse stated Tuesday that together with his remarks in Grand Rapids, the well being secretary had “laid naked how small and ignorant he actually is.”
“Worry and racism are the crutch of pathetic political hacks with completely nothing to supply or progress to level to,” stated Woodhouse. “That is his closing argument for why Republicans want extra energy, smearing a complete folks with gross and immediately disprovable lies? Actually?”
“Secretary Kennedy thinks spewing hate will distract folks from his a number of corruption scandals and starring function within the historic measles and food-borne sickness crises Individuals have suffered by way of this yr,” he added. “This wasn’t the primary time RFK Jr has trafficked in racism, however it could be his ugliest episode but. It’s an indictment of each Mike Rogers and [Republican US Rep.] John James that they haven’t condemned the remarks. They’d quite clap like seals and hope RFK’s racist ‘hail mary’ pays off for them politically. That makes them simply as weak, pathetic, and un-American.”
