CNN has officially fired Marc Lamont Hill as a contributor, the channel announced in a brief statement on Thursday after Hill told an audience at the United Nations that he supported violent Palestinian “resistance” to Israel.
“Marc Lamont Hill is no longer under contract with CNN,” said the network after refusing to respond to multiple inquires about the matter on Wednesday evening and Thursday morning.
Hill, a longtime critic of Israel and supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign, spoke at the United Nations on Wednesday, where he also echoed Hamas talking points calling for a Palestine “from the river to the sea.”
Hamas is a terrorist organization that is committed to the destruction of Israel. Hill suggested at the United Nations that Palestinians could learn from “slave revolts and self-defense and tactics otherwise divergent from Dr. King or Mahatma Gandhi.”
“Contrary to western mythology, black resistance to American apartheid did not come purely through Gandhi and nonviolence,” said Hill. “If we are to operate in true solidarity with the Palestinian people, we must allow the Palestinian people the same range of opportunity and political possibility. If we are standing in solidarity with the Palestinian people, we must recognize the right of an occupied people to defend itself.”
“We must prioritize peace, but we must not romanticize or fetishize it. We must advocate and promote nonviolence at every opportunity, but we cannot endorse a narrow politics of respectability that shames Palestinians for resisting, for refusing to do nothing in the face of state violence and ethnic cleansing,” he added.
Hill concluded his remarks by calling for a free Palestine, “from the river to the sea.” The line has long been a rallying cry for Palestinian nationalists against the state of Israel, and has been used by Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal.
Hill spent most of Wednesday and Thursday on Twitter issuing denials and clarifications, saying his remarks had been misconstrued.
“I believe in a single secular democratic state for everyone. This is the only way that historic Palestine will be free,” he said.