On November 29, CNN confirmed they would no longer contract the work of contributor Marc Lamont-Hill, an outspoken and inherently slanted critic of Israel. Lamont-Hill will retain his position as a professor of Media and Communications at Temple University in spite of his radical rhetoric. Hill’s firing resulted from a November 29 speech at the UN, condoning the destruction of Israel in favor of a Palestine “from the river to the sea.” The phrase, which curtly concluded Hill’s presentation, is regularly used by Hamas terrorists to assert that a future-state of Palestine will reside squarely in the bounds of modern-Israel, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
In September, Hill was recorded stating that Israel is “poisoning your (the Palestinians) water” and “killing” Palestinian children. He maintains that Palestinians must not “romanticize non-violence,” instead condoning a perpetual state of war and suffering universally.
Hill’s conspiratorial and blatantly false comments on Israel, as well as his consorting with terrorist Rasmea Odeh and aligning himself with Dream Defenders, a Florida-based group who “embraces anti-Semitism and engages terrorists,” starkly contrasts Hill’s larger rhetoric of diversity and inclusivity. This past weekend, Hill was the closing speaker at the National Association of Independent Schools’ diversity conference in Nashville, a conference he previously has keynoted at. At the conference, Hill addressed a lack of institutional diversity, particularly in education, and rebuked educators for not promoting a more robustly-diverse student body.
Per Hill, “every time we say a girl can’t be an engineer, say a black boy is inarticulate, when we misgender a student, it is an act of violence.” Yet Hill objectively supports the genocidal rhetoric of terrorists chanting for the murder of Jews and Israelis alike, arguably the ultimate form of violence.
And if Hill so staunchly opposed to misgendering, classifying it as “violence,” he surely should to the fullest extent condemn the physical and emotional terror inflicted upon Israeli civilians by existential Islamic fundamentalists in Hamas and in the Palestinian Authority monetarily compensating terrorists. Yet his rants on Israel fail to recognize this evident reality, in favor of an anti-Semitic, anti-Israel undertone.
Hill similarly fails to recognize Israel’s exemplary record on the values which he supposedly holds so dear: of racial diversity, gender equality, and support and tolerance of the LGBT community.
In his speech at the conference, Hill decried usage of minorities as tokens for a ‘brochure photo,’ and advocated for a more real and lasting implementation of diversity practices, an ambition that Israel has largely accomplished and, in this regard, surpassed many other Western nations. Israel’s inhabitants are primarily people of color--largely of Middle Eastern, Arab, or African descent--and all such racial communities are at the forefront of Israeli innovation and sociopolitical spheres, contrary to the image of racial apartheid portrayed by Hill in his factually dubious smear campaigns against Israel. The Joint List comprises the third-largest bloc in the Knesset, and an Arab justice presides on Israel’s highest court, further demonstrating the far-reaching grasps of Israel’s ingrained values of diversity.
And Israel’s regular marches, parades, and events advocating for equality for the LGBT community have dually gone unnoticed in Hill’s tirades. Hill wholly disregards the evident reality of what life under Palestinian tyrannical rule, such as what is currently in effect in the Palestinian Authority-governed West Bank, would consist of for such minorities: routine persecution institutionalized and legitimized by the values of the Palestinian leadership, and likely death sentences for gays, in continuation with current practice from other Arab states.
Hill’s hypocrisy and selective enforcement of progressive values display a double standard on his part, condemning Israel on false pretenses and refusing to recognize Israel’s leadership for the immense work they have dedicated towards the advancement of progressive principles of diversity and inclusivity. For Hill’s extensive work in promoting diversity across the board, Israel should serve as the example rather than be baselessly tarnished.