Would a racist professor be rewarded by being hired at a high profile university? How about someone who is fiercely anti-LGBT? Certainly not in uber-liberal New York City. But when it comes to someone who hates Israel — the world’s only Jewish state — that seems to be okay.
City University of New York (CUNY) has shamefully hired the radical extremist Marc Lamont Hill — a staunch opponent of Israel, a proud BDS supporter, and an outspoken advocate against the so-called “occupation of Palestine.” He will be a “presidential professor” for Urban Education at CUNY’s Graduate Center.
Hill has a longstanding history of anti-Israel animus. On June 7, 2016, he tweeted: “Israel is very much, by definition, an apartheid state.” An avid supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, he criticized New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s initiative to stop boycotts of Israel, and simplistically defends the movement by insisting that it does not seek Israel’s destruction. (Never mind that Hill once called for a state of Palestine from “the river to the sea,” as will be seen below).
Hill, who is quite active on social media, says that “Blaming the Palestinian Authority for violence in the region is dishonest and unproductive,” claiming that Jerusalem is occupied. Hill advocates the “return” of third- and fourth-generation descendants of Palestinian Arabs who left Israel in 1948 and 1967 — a position that could lead to the demographic destruction of the State of Israel.
In a remarkable denial of accepted facts, he denies radical Islam or religion is a major issue between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs.
During a CNN appearance on August 4, 2014, Hill complained that Israel’s defensive Iron Dome weapon, “Takes away Hamas’s military leverage” over Israel.
Hill has accused Israel of denying “citizenship rights and due process to Palestinians just because they are not Jewish,” and expressed support for boycotting Israel in a speech noting that he thinks that there needs to be “a free Palestine from the river to the sea.”
The phrase “from the river to the sea” is used by those who believe Israel should be eliminated.
He was fired by CNN for those comments, which many viewed as antisemitic. Now he has been hired by CUNY.
Only a few months ago, Hill praised Palestinian terrorist Fatima Bernawi, who attempted to bomb the Zion Cinema in Jerusalem in 1967, saying, “She is a legend among Afro-Palestinians and a beloved daughter of Jerusalem. Much needs to be written about her life and struggle.”
Hill has said the Palestinian issue determines how he votes, and has made it known he’s vote for anti-Israel candidates in the past.
Marc Lamont Hill has the right to his beliefs — but these radical, extremist positions don’t belong at CUNY.