December 5, 2018

On November 29th, CNN announced that political contributor Dr. Marc Lamont Hill’s contract had been terminated. This came after his speech at the UN in which he condemned the illegal 50-year military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and the systematic disenfranchisement of Palestinian citizens of Israel through apartheid laws, in an effort to call for global support for Palestinian resistance in their struggle for basic human rights. National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) stands in solidarity with Dr. Hill, commending the bravery and resilience he displayed by challenging the status quo and speaking out against the continued oppression, colonization, and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their historic homeland. Furthermore, NSJP strongly condemns CNN’s disturbing attempt to stifle free speech, as well as its active contribution to the censorship of political activists of color who denounce the evils of settler-colonialism and racialized violence. Terminating an employee for condemning Israel’s treatment of Palestinians underscores the troubling and widespread trend of silencing critics of state power, which brutalizes and subjugates people of color around the world.

In his UN address, Dr. Marc Lamont Hill rightfully claimed that “we have an opportunity to not just offer solidarity in words, but to commit to political action, grassroots action, local action, and international action that will give us what justice requires, and that is a free Palestine from the river to the sea.” Zionist backlash fixated on the last phrase, “from the river to the sea,” and deferred to misinformed whataboutism which argued that his words were a regurgitation of antisemitic “Hamas rhetoric” rather than a decades-long call for freedom and justice everywhere between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Moreover, CNN and its Zionist supporters misinterpreted Dr. Hill’s statement to mean the “replacement” of Israel with a Palestinian state. What Dr. Hill and the Palestinian people have always asserted by saying “from the river to the sea” is that a single, democratic state with equal citizenship and rights for all is the only solution to the unjust settler-colonial project inflicted against the Palestinian people. Additionally, by arguing that a Palestinian state would replace Israel, one foregoes the reality that was and is Zionism’s violent intent– to colonize Palestinian lands for the purpose of establishing a so-called “Jewish State”, an ethnostate, that inherently discriminates against non-Jews. This argument engages in a dishonest smear campaign that de-contextualizes his speech in its entirety by fixating on a single phrase that demands justice for the Palestinian people, painting Dr. Hill as a vitriolic antisemite. Indeed, Hill himself clarified that his usage of the phrase was not a call to destroy anything aside from the apartheid apparatus that underlies Israel. It was a call for justice. Such a fraudulent campaign only serves to diminish Dr. Hill’s expertise and astute analysis as an individual who has long organized on behalf of marginalized communities, including here in the U.S., and in Palestine. As corporate media that paints itself as unbiased and as valuing the insights of black and brown individuals who have suffered first-hand under white supremacy, CNN should instead have listened to his bold criticism of the status quo and reflected on his words of justice.

Dr. Hill spoke at the UN on the 70th Anniversary of the ratification of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document that enumerates the inalienable rights of all people, regardless of citizenship, gender, sexuality, race, or geographic location, to a life of freedom and dignity. He went on to rightly acknowledge the tragic irony in the simultaneous commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the ongoing Nakba, the catastrophe, that has murdered and displaced over one million Palestinians, and has laid the foundations for the seemingly-unending illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Based on current estimates, Gaza, the world’s largest open-air prison, will be uninhabitable by 2020. As Dr. Hill correctly asserted, only 4% of its water supply is potable. Gazans suffer from an unemployment rate of less than 50%, receive only 4 hours of electricity a day, and live with an occupier’s (in)justice system that convicts them at a rate of 99%.Considering all of this, why is the outrage not directed towards the conditions that constitute genocide and a grotesque violation of human rights?

By demonizing Dr. Hill’s support for the resistance of colonized peoples, institutions like CNN mask state violence committed against people of color which is legitimized by the dismissal of the structural power imbalance that exists between the oppressor and the oppressed. Armed resistance is not undertaken in a vacuum; instead, it is a justified response by colonized peoples to their sustained brutalization. Indeed, the concept of resistance necessitates an opposing structure against which the people resist. The enslavement and colonization of African countries and their land was violent. Jim Crow laws that enforced racial segregation here in the US were violent. The mass targeted-incarceration of Black and Brown bodies, and the subsequent (and contemporary) enforcement of unpaid slave labor, is violent. The killing of unarmed Black people by militarized police is violent. Ethnic cleansing and the displacement of indigenous populations which relies on extrajudicial killing are violent. In that same vein, Dr. Hill rightfully pointed out that the Israeli-enforced military occupation, and the apartheid system under which it functions, is wholly violent. Violence is precisely what oppressed communities are subjected to, depriving them of the right to life enshrined by the organization whose convening Dr. Hill spoke at. Why are the oppressed constantly expected to endure such brutality, through which they are enslaved, killed, and deprived of basic human rights?

Unfortunately, the vilification and wrongful termination of Dr. Marc Lamont Hill is not an exception to the rule, and perfectly aligns with the concerted efforts of Zionists to chill Palestine activists’ free speech. In fact, a 2015 report published by Palestine Legal reveals the complicity of universities, government actors, and other institutions in systematically silencing and demonizing pro-Palestinian activists. These are the same institutions that consistently present themselves as incubators for the so-called “marketplace of ideas” and "healthy debate." Last week, Dr. Hill joined the ranks of Malcolm X, Paul Robeson, Muhammad Ali, Kwame Ture, George Jackson, Huey P. Newton, Assata Shakur, Angela Davis, and other leading Black internationalists throughout history that strove for freedom and justice, but were silenced and demonized. As Noura Erakat highlights, the Carter administration fired Andrew Young as US ambassador to the UN because he secretly met with the PLO in an attempt to mediate peace. The US also pulled out of the Durban Review Conference on Racism because participants called out Israeli apartheid, and liberal Zionists cut funding to Movement for Black Lives member groups for endorsing BDS as a part of their Platform for Black Lives. Moreover, Hill is in the company of Steven Salaita, a former professor at the University of Illinois - Urbana Champaign who was dismissed from a tenure-track teaching position for exercising his constitutional right to critique Israel, as well as the countless pro-Palestinian students that have been blacklisted by the anonymously-run website, “Canary Mission.”

CNN’s mistreatment of Dr. Marc Lamont Hill reveals the emptiness of their supposed commitment to diversity. While neoliberal institutions continue to hire Black and Brown intellectuals to inject a facade of justice and equity, they also continue to punish them for "speaking out of line" and against the liberal establishment’s status quo. Indeed, CNN continues to brand itself as a progressive media outlet that critiques police brutality, the inaction around climate change, and the unjust policies of Trump. In this instance, however, it has torn the veil, and revealed its complicity in bankrolling the settler-colonial campaign that is Zionism as it continues to rob Palestinians of their very humanity. NSJP demands that CNN reinstate Dr. Marc Lamont Hill and make a formal commitment to providing fair coverage of the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, because in the words of Dr. Hill himself, “we can no longer allow the political left to stay radical and progressive on every issue except for Palestine.”

You can take action now to demand Marc Lamont Hill’s reinstatement by emailing CNN through this form and/or by calling CNN at this number: (404) 827-1500 (option 3). ​