In his gripping speech at the on November 28, Marc Lamont Hill – CNN Commentator and Professor at Temple University – roasted Israel for restricting freedom and impairing equality for Israeli Palestinians as well as those in West Bank and Gaza.
While commemorating the International Day of Solidarity with Palestinian people, he said that there are more than sixty Israeli laws that deny Palestinians access to full citizenship rights simply because they are not Jewish.
‘Palestinians continue to be physically and psychologically tortured by Israeli criminal judicial system, a term I can only use with irony.’ Hill also slated Israel for routinely keeping Palestinians in solitary confinements and indefinite detentions.
Talking about Nakba – the great catastrophe in May 1948 that resulted in the expulsion, murder, and permanent dislocation of over a million Palestinians – Hill criticized international community for depriving Palestinians the most of fundamental human rights.
He also panned American presidents including Trump for not taking principled and actionable position in defense of Palestinian rights and voiced ‘as an American, I am embarrassed that my tax dollars contribute to this reality’.
‘Solidarity from the international community demands that we embrace boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) as a critical means by which to hold Israel accountable for its treatment of Palestinian people.’
Hill concluded that the international community has the opportunity to take political, grassroots, local, and international action that is what justice requires – ‘and that is a free Palestine from river to the sea’.
The statement ‘a free Palestine from river to the sea’ – often associated with Hamas and refers to extending Palestine borders from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea – was deliberated as anti-Semitic or against the Jews.
As a result, he was fired by the US cable news network (CNN) within next 24 hours.
Hill responded on twitter ‘I support Palestinian freedom. I support Palestinian self-determination. I am deeply critical of Israeli policy and practice. I do not support anti-Semitism, killing Jewish people or any of the other things attributed to my speech’.
The sacking of Hill as a CNN contributor after his oration in the United Nations triggered a widespread debate in the United States about the limitation of freedom of speech, when it comes to Israel or anti-Semitism.
Hill is not the only American who has shown his laments toward Israeli tyranny on Palestinians and criticized US presidents’ profound silence on Israeli atrocities on Palestinians. They are increasing number of Americans who maintain the same opinion.
In a recent University of Maryland’s Critical Issues Poll, American Views of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, fielded by Nielson Scarborough – 38% of the all adult surveyed Americans (including 55% of Democrats and 19% Republicans) believed that Israeli government has ‘too much influence’ on American politics and policies.
Only 9% of the online survey participants thought that Israelis have ‘too little influence’, while 48% (including 69% Republicans and 31% Democrats) of the Americans termed it ‘about the right level of influence’.
The younger Americans (aged 18-34 years) – 44% – were more convinced that Israeli government has ‘too much influence’ on American politics and policies, as compared to 35+ years aged people, who considered it to be 36%.
When asked about Trump administration role in mediating Israeli-Palestine conflict, 62% of all Americans (including 67% youths) suggested that it should ‘lean toward neither side’; an increase of 3% from 2017 poll that found 59% Americans had the same view.
Americans were almost tied when quizzed about ‘a two-state solution’ or ‘one-state solution’. 36% supported a two-state solution: Israel and Palestine side by side and Palestine would be established on the territories that Israel occupied in 1967.
35% of the all Americans opined for one-state solution: a single democratic state – covering all of what is now Israel and the Palestinian territories – with full and equal citizenship rights for both Jews and Arabs.
On the constructions of illegal Israeli settlements after 1967, the poll showed that 40% Americans believed to either impose some economic sanctions through the UN or unilaterally or take more serious action against Israel.
An overwhelming majority of Democrats (56%) supported such intensive measures against the government of Israel; 26% Republicans endorsed the Democrats also for sanctions on Israel, despite having little awareness on Hill’s backed BDS movement.
Reacting in a podcast last week over his dismissal from CNN on November 29 – Hill said ‘I think it was a hasty decision (by CNN). I disagree with the decision. And the history will vindicate that the claims I made’.
Quite a few other people came out to defend Hill and blasted the cable network for providing much airtime to the racists, the white supremacists, and the climate change deniers but firing Hill in no time.
Former CNN host Soledad O’Brien was also one of those. She tweeted “this exactly – they give a platform – and their credibility – to racists/white supremacists, all in the name of ‘hearing them out’ (which is rating plot btw)”.
Temple University, that employs Hill as Professor of Media Studies and Urban Education, also came under pressure to fire him, but Pennsylvania-based institution avoided any such act – recognizing his First Amendment rights.
On December 11, Temple University released a bamboozled statement that condemned Hill’s remarks in the UN – ‘disappointment, displeasure, and disagreement’ – while at the same time, supporting his Constitutional right to speak as a private individual.
Albeit all psychosomatic stabbings and detrimental career-ending tactics, Professor Marc Lamont Hill still stands by his stance on supporting Palestine and knocking Israel.
‘I am OK, profoundly OK’, the academic says.