Marc Lamont Hill applauds Linda Sarsour’s false claim that Israel practices apartheid. |
In a video released this week, Temple University prof and self-styled Middle East expert Marc Lamont Hill applauded antisemitic activist Linda Sarsour’s calling Israel “apartheid.”
The March 9 interview at Hill’s Uncle Bobbie’s Coffee and Books in Philadelphia was part of Sarsour’s promotional tour to hawk her book, We Are not Here to Be Bystanders.
Early in their chat Sarsour described her father as coming from “a small village in the West Bank of Palestine.” Hill looked on intently, not bothering to correct his guest’s egregious politicization of geography, there being no such place as Palestine.
Hill skillfully prompted his guest to talk about herself, something Sarsour did quite enthusiastically. Finally, he got around to the real point of the interview: asking Sarsour about her pro-Palestinian activism.
Predictably, Sarsour rambled, tossing off loaded, mendacious terms to describe Israel’s ostensible “military occupation” and its “police state.”
“Palestinians have been living under the longest standing military occupation in modern history,” she said, brow furrowed, eyes dark. “When you see a school closing down in Philly, when you see the lack of resources, lack of clinics and hospitals, but we find trillions of dollars to give to a state that oppresses another people, this is why this cause is all of ours. For me Palestine is our modern-day South Africa apartheid.”
Hill never challenged Sarsour’s false claims as she spun her antisemitic, conspiratorial scenario; he even applauded at the word “apartheid.” (To take but two examples: total U.S. aid to Israel doesn’t even approach a trillion dollars, while most Arabs in Israel don’t want to live under Palestinian Authority rule.)
Of course, no one expects better from the likes of Hill, who recently starred in a video about Israel and the Palestinians described by one critic as an “ahistorical, revisionist steaming pile of half-truths.” He and Sarsour pair perfectly.
David Gerstman is managing editor of Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum.
