The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) called CNN political commentator and Temple University Professor Marc Lamont Hill’s call for a “free Palestine from the river to sea” on Wednesday “divisive” and “destructive” in an email to the Journal.
According to Arutz Sheva, Hill accused Israel in a Wednesday speech at the United Nations of infringing upon “citizenship rights to Palestinians just because they are not Jewish” and denying “due process” to Palestinians.
Hill went on to endorse the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and said that while peace is the highest priority, “we must not romanticize or fetishize it.”
“We must promote non violence at every opportunity, but cannot endorse narrow politics that shames Palestinians for resisting, for refusing to do nothing in ethnic cleansing,” Hill said.
He added that he thinks that there needs to be “a Free Palestine from the River to the Sea.”
Sharon Nazarian, the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) senior vice president for international affairs, told the Journal in an email, “Those calling for ‘from the river to the sea’ are calling for an end to the State of Israel.”
“It is a shame that once again, this annual event at the United Nations does not promote constructive pathways to ‘Palestinian solidarity’ and a future of peace, but instead divisive and destructive action against Israel,” Nazarian said.
Similarly, Simon Wiesenthal Center Associate Dean Rabbi Abraham Cooper told the Journal in an email, “Justice requires a ‘Free Palestine from the River to the Sea’? Marc Lamont Hill is a confirmed anti-Zionist ideologue. His extremist, anti-peace views merit coverage on CNN, not as a paid pundit but as a supreme propagandist unfettered by facts.”
Cooper added, “By the way Marc, where will you put the nearly 9 million Israeli citizens, nearly 20% of whom are Arabs? Any Palestinian entity we’ve been told will be Judenrein—only place left is… Mediterranean Sea.”
Hill responded to some of the criticism he received from his remarks on Twitter:
I believe in a single secular democratic state for everyone. This is the only way that historic Palestine will be free. https://t.co/6RXO7WfwG1
— Marc Lamont Hill (@marclamonthill) November 28, 2018
There was a great deal of two state talk today at the UN. I think my one state allusions were, at best, a minority position. https://t.co/0qLqFa1ArR
— Marc Lamont Hill (@marclamonthill) November 28, 2018
Ummm. That’s absurd. I called for freedom and equal rights for all citizens, irrespective of race, religion, class, gender, or sexual identity. No one should have greater or fewer rights and privileges in a democracy. It’s quite simple. https://t.co/bT3EMowWQ9
— Marc Lamont Hill (@marclamonthill) November 28, 2018
This is silly. And inaccurate. “River to the sea” is a phrase that precedes Hamas by more than 50 years. It also has a variety of meanings. In my remarks, which you clearly didn’t hear, I was talking about full citizenship rights IN Israel and a redrawing of the pre-1967 borders. https://t.co/6jFN22mTcq
— Marc Lamont Hill (@marclamonthill) November 28, 2018
Hill has not responded to the Journal’s request for comment as of publication time.
More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.