Marc Lamont Hill, an American academic and activist who has previously drawn fire for advocating the eradication of Israel, told a virtual discussion hosted by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) that the Black Lives Matter movement supports the “dismantling of the Zionist project.”
In 2018, Hill was fired by CNN, where he had been a featured commentator, after he was filmed calling for freeing Palestine “from the river to the sea,” a pro-Palestinian slogan used as a euphemism for destroying Israel and replacing it with an Arab state. At the time, the Daily Beast reported that network executives had been “on alert” about Hill thanks in part to coverage by The Algemeiner.
In a clip posted to YouTube, Hill is shown speaking at a panel discussion on Feb 6, held by the DSA’s BDS/Palestine Solidarity National Working Group, as well as the National Political Education Committee, the DSA Muslim Caucus, and the Afrosocialists and Socialists of Color Caucus (AFROSOC).
In the video, Hill says, “We can’t dismantle white supremacy or imperialism section by section” and said this applies to Israel as well, referring to it as “a settler-colonial movement in Palestine.”
The description of Israel as a “settler-colonial” state is a frequent libel used as an attempt to delegitimize Israel and reject its right to exist.
Hill then repeated the long-discredited claim that Israel is responsible for US police violence against minorities, saying, “US police are being trained in Israel and some Israeli police are being trained in the United States.”
Known as “Deadly Exchange,” this claim is frequently used by anti-Israel and antisemitic activists, but has been discredited by those involved in US-Israeli police training programs and considered by some to be a blood libel. While such programs do exist, they have focused on managerial strategies and anti-terrorism methods.
Hill expressly accused Israel of teaching the US to commit racist acts of murder, saying that American police don’t need to be trained by Israel to “kill black people” and “vice-versa.”
All of this, Hill asserted, “speaks to a global system that we have to dismantle.” As a result, “Black Lives Matter, very explicitly, is talking about the dismantling of the Zionist project” and “very explicitly embracing BDS on those grounds.”
Another panelist then tells Hill, “That was deep.”
According to the video description, also on the panel was top BDS activist Omar Barghouti, who has likewise openly expressed support for annihilating Israel.
Many of Hill’s comments are considered antisemitic under the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism, which has been adopted by the US State Department and many governments around the world.
The definition states that “accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing ... even for acts committed by non-Jews,” “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination,” and “calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology” are all antisemitic.