A masterclass in Palestine solidarity
Watching Marc Lamont Hill’s speech at the United Nations on Wednesday was like a breath of fresh air. Unlike the mundane and repetitive remarks made by aging diplomats, Hill delivered a powerful articulation of the Palestinian struggle and how he, as a Black American, identifies with their cause. More provocatively, Hill reflected upon the history of Black resistance to “American apartheid,” which ranged from nonviolent boycotts to slave revolts, saying that true solidarity “must allow the Palestinian people the same range of opportunity and political possibility.”
Pro-Israel advocates have portrayed Hill’s speech as a violent and anti-Semitic diatribe, focusing especially on his call to achieve “what justice requires, and that is a free Palestine from the river to the sea.” They claim that this phrase is a “genocidal” and “jihadist” slogan associated with groups like Hamas, and that it implies the elimination of the Jewish state, if not the Jewish people on the land. CNN, for which Hill was a frequent contributor, severed its ties with him following the uproar.
Aside from the fact that many of Hill’s critics deliberately misconstrued the content of his speech, the hysteria over the phrase “the river to the sea” is grossly misplaced. Groups like Hamas do not own, nor do they orchestrate, the source from which that phrase derives: the Palestinians’ collective desire to fulfill their human rights in their historical homeland. Conflating the two is politically dishonest and viciously dehumanizing; it encourages the belief that the Palestinian cause is something to be defeated, rather than respected.
