CUNY Professor Marc Lamont Hill, the former CNN correspondent who was fired for endorsing violence and calling for a “free Palestine from the river to the sea” at the United Nations, denied that Hamas is a terrorist organization even after the group massacred over 1,400 people in southern Israel on October 7, the New York Post reported.
Hill made the comments during an appearance on Briahna Joy Gray’s “Bad Faith” podcast last week. He had previously had a Hamas spokesman as a guest on his Al Jazeera program ‘UpFront.’
He lamented that Hamas spokespeople and officials are not interviewed by mainstream media outlets because Hamas is considered a terrorist organization.
“I’m not convinced that they’re unwilling to talk to these other networks. It seems to me that other corporate media outlets have made the decision that they don’t want to be in conversation with them, and part of why is because they’ve decided to frame them as a terrorist network,” he claimed.
Hill declared that Hamas should be considered a “government” rather than terrorists and dismissed comparisons between Hamas and ISIS.
“And when you have Netanyahu and others saying that they’re no different than... ISIS, then it becomes- you wouldn’t do an exclusive with ISIS on CNN so they’re not going to do one with Hamas,” he said.
“And it’s part of a broader project, I think, of framing Hamas not as a government organization – even if you think that what happened on October 7 was an act of terrorism – by framing them as a terrorist organization rather than a government, rather than a democratically-elected government and/or political party, it makes it easy to avoid political and diplomatic solutions.”
Hill claimed that he “understands” Hamas though he does not support the organization.
On October 28, Hill attended an anti-Israel rally in Philadelphia in which he stated that “history didn’t start on October 7.”
“For 100 years, there’s been a settler-colonial project,” he claimed, stating that it is a"right-wing lie” that Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 even though every last Israeli civilian and soldier left or was forcibly removed from the Strip as part of the Disengagement.
“There will never be peace in the land until there is justice for the people,” he claimed, going on to say that justice requires expelling hundreds of thousands and possibly millions of Jews from their homes and flooding Israel with millions of Arabs from around the world. “Justice looks will be no more settlements, justice means getting rid of the current settlements. Justice means Palestinians around the world being able to return to their homes.”
Hill repeated the disproven antisemitic canard that Israeli police train American police
In his remarks, Hill did not condemn the Hamas massacre or any of the atrocities Hamas committed. Nor did he call for the release of any of Hamas’ hostages. He did demand a ceasefire.
In 2018, Hill delivered a speech at the United Nations International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian people in which he stated that the world cannot “fetishize non-violence” for the Palestinian Arabs and called for a “free Palestine from the river to the sea,” a call for the destruction of the State of Israel and its inhabitants and a slogan of Hamas.
Hill opposes any form of Israeli self-defense as he considers the entire state illegitimate. He has gone as far as to oppose the Iron Dome missile defense system, a purely defensive system that shoots down rockets fired at Israeli cities and which has allowed Israel to hold back when attacked by Hamas for the last decade.
In 2019, Hill produced a documentary film featuring a Palestinian Arab terrorist convicted of bombing civilian targets in Jerusalem.
Hill also came under fire that year for denying Mizrachi Jewish identity, claiming it had been invented for political purposes