Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) National President Morton A. Klein and ZOA Director of Special Projects Liz Berney, Esq. released the following statement:

These are frightening times for the Jewish people. Last week, the United Nations General Assembly failed to pass a U.S.-sponsored resolution condemning Hamas – the terror organization that has murdered over 1,000 Jews and whose charter calls for destroying Israel and murdering every Jew – thereby sending a green light to Hamas and the world that it’s okay to murder Jews. Jews are regularly being attacked and murdered all over Europe, Israel and even here in the United States. 

This creates an even greater urgency and imperative for the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) to strongly condemn Temple University’s Board, led by Patrick O’Connor and Mitchell Morgan, as well as president Richard Englert, for refusing to fire or suspend or remove the honorary chair from, or take any significant action against dangerous, antisemitic, radical Muslim, pro-BDS, Farrakhan-loving, Jew-killer praising, Israel-hating, violence-inciting-and-promoting, Stephen Charles Professor Marc Lamont Hill, after Hill repeatedly, to this day, glorifies and defends Palestinian Arab terrorism and violence against innocent civilian Jews as “self-defense,” and defames and calls for the Jewish State’s destruction. Militant Muslim Hill also falsely claimed that American police shoot and kill African Americans because of the training they receive from Israel. 

Temple University’s pathetic and inexcusable inaction, the lack of real consequences to Hill, and the Temple Board of Trustees’ inadequate, weak “Statement of Condemnation” on December 11, 2018 – which only mentioned one of Hill’s numerous egregious and frightening statements, ignoring all the others, and merely expressed “disappointment, displeasure, and disagreement with Professor Hill’s comments” – May well promote more anti-Jewish and anti-Israel violence and incitement. Apparently, a university professor can call for violence against Jews and Israel’s destruction – over and over again – with impunity.  

ZOA calls on Temple University to take necessary strong action against Hill:  Temple University needs to fire Hill, just as CNN did, or at least remove his Stephen Charles Chair, to begin to restore the university’s reputation as a peaceful, non-hostile university environment for Jewish and pro-Israel students and all students.  

Otherwise, there could also be a negative response from potential and present Temple donors as well as students considering applying to Temple. 

ZOA further calls for the Temple University Board to obtain some answers – such as: Who paid for Hill’s at least ten trips to the Middle East? What is Hill’s connection with the anti-Israel group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and other anti-Israel hate groups? Was Hill paid for his UN speech, and by whom?

And the Board should insist upon real apologies and retractions from Hill, instead of Hill simply trying to claim that his words didn’t mean what they did mean. Hill should specifically apologize for and retract: his calling Israel’s establishment as a “tragedy and catastrophe”; his praise for antisemite Louis Farrakhan; his call for ending the Jewish State; his blood libel lie that Israelis are poisoning Palestinian Arabs’ water; his praising Jew-killers by name; his calls for violent tactics; his promoting Arab violent terrorism as “self-defense” and “resistance” – and all of Hill’s other statements described in this article.

Hill knows he should be fired:  Even Marc Lamont Hill must be surprised that Temple University is doing nothing to remove him from his university post. During Hill’s September 28, 2018 “Resilience Across Movements” U.S. national BDS movement (USCPR) annual conference speech, Hill promoted violence, disparaged “romanticizing non-violence,” and declared “I’m going [PFLP terrorist] Leila Khaled-style” – and then promptly added: “I’m probably fired right now.”  (Leila Khaled is the grenade-toting, Kalishnikov-carrying female PFLP/Black September terrorist who hijacked two airplanes – TWA and El Al.  Khaled continues to promote and be glorified as a “poster girl” for anti-Israel violence.) 

If antisemitic radical Muslim Prof. Marc Lamont Hill said the same things about any group other than Jews, Hill would likely be promptly fired.  If a white professor had called for violence against African Americans, called for the destruction of an African or Muslim country, praised David Duke or those who promote violence against Blacks, he would likely be fired.

Hill’s speeches calling for violence tout his Temple Univ. connection:  Notably, the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, USCPR conference program stated that Hill “serves as the Steve Charles Professor of Media, Cities, and Solutions at Temple University.”  This contradicts the Temple University board’s statement that Hill is speaking only for himself; Hill’s speeches repeatedly drag Temple University’s name through the mud.

Hill is involved with the antisemitic, anti-Israel hate group SJP at Temple Univ.:  Hill is apparently also involved with the local campus anti-Israel hate group, “Temple SJP” (Students for Justice in Palestine).  For instance:

• On October 22, 2018, Hill retweeted the notice of a Temple SJP event.

• On October 6, 2017, a Temple SJP event entitled “Temple SJP Presents Marc Lamont Hill” featured “Temple University Professor” Hill “speaking on his work in Palestine.”

• Temple SJP’s Facebook page posting of “Photos of Temple University Students for Justice in Palestine” shows Hill, along with the words “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

Several reports and Congressional testimony have documented that Students for Justice in Palestine is funded by Hamas’s funders, advocates for violence and engages in outright violent attacks on Jewish students on U.S. college campuses.  The recent Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs report explains that SJP seeks “to isolate, demonize, and ultimately destroy” Israel with the help of terror-linked financial and ideological supporters, and lists multiple instances of SJP members targeting American Jewish students for “anti-Semitic vandalism, verbal attacks, and outright violence.”  Brandeis University and the monitoring group AMCHA Initiative studies “found a correlation between the presence of SJP and a rise in campus anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.”

Temple SJP’s Facebook pages reveal that Temple SJP “combats anti-normalization” (that means they oppose any normal contact and interaction with Jews and Jewish groups); promotes the Hamas “March of Return” (the violent Hamas riots and attempts to invade Israel to murder Jews); promotes terrorist Ahed Tamimi; promotes “resistance” (violence); and on and on.

Temple University’s statement failed to mention Hill’s long record of promoting anti-Jewish violence and the Jewish State’s destruction, parroting the words of terror groups:The Temple University board statement only mentioned one of Hill’s egregious statements: Hill’s call, during his November 28 speech at the United Nations International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, for “Free Palestine from the river to the sea.” This is the well-known chant for the violent destruction of all of Israel.

Significantly, the Temple Univ. Board’s statement ignored the rest of Hill’s long, horrifying record of promoting anti-Jewish blood libels, anti-Israel violence, and Israel’s destruction – including additional statements in the same UN speech and elsewhere.  Hill’s statements parrot those of terrorist groups Hamas, PFLP, and Fatah. If the Board had described more of Hill’s record, it would have been blatantly obvious that Temple University needs to fire Hill. Hill’s hateful, frightening, violence-promoting record includes the following:

• During his November 28, 2018 UN speech, Hill insisted that “we must offer more than just words,” and that instead we must allow Palestinian Arabs to engage in “revolts,” “resistance,” and “tactics otherwise divergent from Dr. King and Mahatma Gandhi.”  Hill’s “divergent tactics” statement is a call to adopt violent tactics. And, “resistance” is the well-known euphemism for Palestinian Arab violence and terrorism. 

• During his UN speech, Hill further elevated violent “resistance” over non-violence, saying: “we cannot endorse narrow politics that shames Palestinians for resisting” and “we allowed this non-violent thing to become so normative that we’re undermining our ability to resist in real robust ways.”

• Also at the UN on Nov. 28, 2018, Hill called Israel’s rebirth in 1948 the “Nakba – the tragic and great catastrophe” – language that rationalizes Hill’s calls for Israel’s extinction. Hill also demanded a so-called Palestinian “right of return” – an Arab ploy to eliminate the Jewish State by allowing millions of Arabs to move in to overrun the Jewish State.

White supremacist David Duke praised Hill’s horrendous UN speech.  That should surely give the Temple University Board pause.

• At the September 28, 2018 anti-Israel conference of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights – the major anti-Israel BDS group in the United States (where Hill was introduced as the Steven Charles professor at Temple University), Hill falsely declared that Israel is “poisoning your [Palestinian Arabs’] water,” and “locking up” and “killing” Arab children – classic medieval antisemitic blood libels. Hill again advocated for violence, saying that “part of the problem is . . . we too often adopt a civil rights tradition, that romanticizes non-violence . . . We can’t romanticize resistance.”

• As noted above, during his Sept. 28, 2018, USCPR speech, Hill declared, “I’m going [PFLP terrorist] Leila Khaled-style” – and then promptly added: “I’m probably fired right now.”

• On September 28, 2018, Hill also repeatedly tweeted and wrote on Instagram that he was “Honored to have spoken at the [anti-Israel, pro-BDS] US Campaign for Palestinian Rights Conference.”  Hill’s Instagram posting also lauded Rachel Corrie, deceased member of the violent anti-Israel “International Solidarity Movement” (ISM) and Prof. Noura Erakat, a leading promoter of anti-Israel BDS and “resistance” (violence), who in her speech at the same conference, praised PFLP terrorist/murderer of Jewish students Rasmea Odeh as a “freedom fighter.”

• On national television in 2014, Hill complained that the anti-missile defense system, the Iron Dome, “takes away Hamas’s military leverage” over Israel, and doesn’t permit Hamas to exact “retribution” against Israel.  Hamas is on U.S. list of terrorist groups. Hill’s position would leave innocent Israeli civilians unprotected from Hamas’s rocket barrages.

• In a 2014 debate with Alan Dershowitz, Hill justified terrorism and murdering Jews saying: “Everything that Hamas is doing, everything that the Palestinian people are fighting for, is from a posture of resistance to occupation.”  Hill also falsely called Israel an “apartheid” state, and falsely and absurdly claimed that “80%” of casualties in Gaza were civilians. (The Gazan casualties were predominantly Hamas members; Israel took extraordinary care to avoid civilian casualties, while Hamas used civilians as human shields.)

• In 2015, Hill defended and promoted Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine leader Rasmea Odeh, who was convicted for murdering two Jewish students in a Jerusalem bombing, in Hill’s Huffington Post op-ed titled “Why Every Black Activist Should Stand With Rasmea Odeh.” Hill called Odeh a “Palestinian freedom fighter being railroaded for her commitment to justice.”  

• That same year, in a Palestine Solidarity Dream Defenders “revolutionary struggle” video filmed inside pre-1967 Israel, Hill declared while standing in Israel that we’re here in “Palestine” which “has been stolen by greed and destroyed by hate,” and falsely accused Israel of writing laws “in the blood of the innocent.”  Hill also endorsed “revolutionary struggle,” “resistance” and “fighting” against the Israeli “occupation” of “Palestine.”  At minutes 1:12-1:30 of a longer video of the same event, Hill wore a Palestinian Arab keffiyeh similar to that worn by terrorist Yasser Arafat. 

• In a 2018 op-ed for the Huffington Post, Hill asserted that the statement “Israel has the right to exist” is merely “Israeli propaganda.”  Hill also falsely portrayed the Jewish people’s entire eternal homeland as “stolen land,” and opposed any deal that would leave any of Israel in existence.

• In May 2017, Hill tweeted: “Trump’s position on Israel/Palestine is repugnant.  His call for Palestine to ‘reject hatred and terrorism’ is offensive & counterproductive.”  It is utterly mind-boggling that Hill states that it is “repugnant” and “offensive” to demand that Palestinian Arab terrorists should stop murdering Jews.

• Further, in equally horrible follow-ups in May 2017 to the above horrendous comment, Hill tweeted that it is “offensive to only call on Palestinians to ‘behave’, while normalizing/ ignoring the violence of the occupation”; tweeted that it was “offensive” to compare “Palestinian resistance to settler-colonialism to the actions of ISIS”; and tweeted: “We all agree that hatred and terrorism are bad things. The issue is who gets to define each term, and under what conditions.”

In other words, Hill was declaring that Palestinian Arab terrorism isn’t terrorism. This, like Hill’s other statements, is a major “line” of anti-Israel terror groups Hamas, PFLP and Fatah.

As the Algemeiner sarcastically noted:  “Obviously, it’s appallingly presumptuous of Israelis to define it as “terrorism” when Palestinians murder and maim civilians who are having pizza for lunch, who celebrate Passover or attend services in a synagogue, who ride a bus, go out for dinner and entertainment, or just go to sleep in their bed at home. And, of course, it’s also terribly presumptuous of those Israelis to call it “hatred” when the murderous perpetrators of such attacks are celebrated by Palestinians as heroes — heroes who get handsomely paid and have buildings or events named in their honor.  After all, who on earth would think of “hatred and terrorism” when the Gaza-based Wa’ed Band for Islamic Art produces a cute cartoon clip “depicting Israelis trembling in fear and fleeing the country,” while the band’s great musicians sing: “My rockets long for you, and they will rain down on you; … I’m coming for you with a gun, or with an axe and a knife — or I could run over you with my car.”  Hatred and terrorism?  Nope. Just “Islamic Art” illustrating what “Palestinian resistance to settler-colonialism” is all about, right, Professor Hill?”  (See “Yes, Marc Lamont Hill Is an Antisemite,” by Petra Marquardt-Bigman, Algemeiner, May 17, 2017) 

• Hill has also continued to promote Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan even after Farrakhan equated Jews to “termites” on Facebook in October 2018, and despite Farrakhan’s unrepentant, lengthy, continuing history of making virulent antisemitic speeches, sermons and statements. Hill also previously posted a glowing Instagram lauding Farrakhan:  “Been blessed to spend the last day with Minister Louis Farrakhan. An amazing time of learning, listening, laughing, and even head nodding to music.  God is Great.”  (See details and additional Hill hateful statements in “ZOA to CNN & Temple University: Fire Bigot Jew-Hater Marc Lamont Hill: Lamont Hill Promotes & Praises Anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan, Jew-killers, Hate-Groups and Anti-Israel Boycotts and Blood Libels,” Oct. 24, 2018.) 

• And on the “Breakfast Club” show on December 12, 2018 (after Hill was fired), Hill again praised Farrakhan, saying: “Again, Minister Farrakhan is my brother.”  In addition, after being questioned about Women’s March leaders Linda Sarsour and Tamika Mallory who support Farrakhan, Hill opposed “the idea that we have to renounce [Farrakhan], denounce him, and throw him away.”  [min. 17:47; 18:18].  Hill added: “In the black tradition, I ain’t [sic] got the luxury of throwing people who love us [Farrakhan] away. . . We can’t do that.  We shouldn’t do that.”  [19:05] (Link to video is included in “After CNN Firing, Marc Lamont Hill Blames Israel for Police Killings of Black People, Opposes Renouncing Farrakhan,” by Shiri Moshe, Algemeiner, Dec. 17, 2018.)

• During the same December 12, 2018 “Breakfast Club” show, Hill repeatedly defamed Israelis. Hill falsely accused Israelis of “beating [Arab] children with nightsticks” (minute 13:45); humiliating 80-year-old Arab men by making them pull down their pants (13:25); “ritually” humiliating Palestinian Arab children by making them go through checkpoints (13:27) (of course, people throughout the world routinely go through checkpoints every day at airports and elsewhere to prevent terrorism); and “kill[ing] and maim[ing] and “harming” [Arab] people.”  Hill also praised the “amazing work” of the Dream Defenders – an anti-Israel group that, among other things, promotes anti-Israel boycotts, falsely accuses Israel of genocide and ethnic cleansing against Palestinian Arabs, and organized a letter demanding the release of convicted Arab terrorist Ahed Tamimi.  (21:12)

• During the same Breakfast Club show, Hill also falsely tried to twist his firings from Fox News and CNN as motivated by racism, saying: “Massa’ comin’ for you.”  (minute 21:50)  He also indicated that he promoted abolishing prisons. (22:00)  And after a host said “Angela [Davis] be hanging out with the car and the gun, ready to go,” (apparently a reference to anti-Israel BDS-promoter Angela Davis’s alleged involvement in purchasing firearms for the murder of a judge in California in 1970), Hill responded: “Exactly. I love her [Angela Davis] for that.”  (23:35)

• Also during the same Breakfast Club show, Hill falsely and outrageously blamed Israel for alleged police murders of black people in the United States, saying: “The New York City police, they’re killing us, but they’re being trained by Israeli security forces,” he said. “They’re being trained — New York City police and in other cities as well. So here’s a connection between the two. I can’t stop one without the other, there’s a relationship.” (26:50)  This is a vicious antisemitic libel fomented by anti-Israel BDS groups seeking to turn Black-Americans against the Jewish nation – despite the fact that Israel is the only nation in the world that rescued blacks (such as Ethiopian Jews) from oppression and brought them to live freely in Israel.  The referenced training is merely anti-terror training.  

• During the same show, Hill again promoted and tried to justify violent Palestinian Arab “resistance.”  Hill complained that “every act of resistance that Palestinian people engage in is called terrorism” (29:35 and 30:20); falsely accused Israel of “illegal” “collective punishment” (29:53); ignored the thousands of innocent Israelis murdered and maimed by Palestinian Arab terrorists and instead claimed that acts such as the shooting two days before of a pregnant Jewish mother “is not the story of what’s been happening” (30:15); and, invoking the falsehood that Israel is an “occupier” of her own land, stating “If I come into your house and take all your sh-t, and at some point, I push back, then how do we make sense of that as a moral project. . . . [A]n occupied people have the legal right to resist.”  (30:38) Hill also asserted, in reference to charges that he is antisemitic: “I’m not willing to stop criticizing colonialism.”  (37:38)

• On October 3, 2018, Hill tweeted “It’s worth every minute” to watch a 20-minute video (also promoted by Noura Erakat), entitled “The Palestinian Kids Fighting Israel’s Occupation,” that glorifies convicted Palestinian Arab terrorist Ahed Tamimi, and (falsely) accuses Israel of various blood libels, including “systematic abuse of #Palestinian children.” Tamimi attacked, kicked and slapped an Israeli soldier and openly urged Palestinian Arabs to engage in anti-Jewish “stabbings, martyrdom-seeking operations [i.e. suicide bombings], throwing stones – everyone must do something.”  The Tamami family persistently advocates and engages in terror: Ahed Tamami’s mother posted graphic instructions on Facebook for lethally stabbing Jews, and her aunt was responsible for the Sbarro pizza bombing, in which 15 innocent Jews, including a pregnant woman and 7 children were murdered, and 130 were injured.

• In an April 2018 speech (video), Hill recited the exact same lies that he repeated in his November 28 UN speech.  Hill called Israel’s rebirth 70 years ago the “Nakba” and “the great catastrophe,” and falsely claimed that 70 years ago “Palestinian land was stolen” and “vulnerable Palestinians had their lives taken.”  (In fact, in 1948-1949, six Arab countries invaded Israel, illegally seized Judea/Samaria and eastern Jerusalem, and killed 6,000 Jews – one percent of Israel’s population.)  Hill declared “We remain committed to resistance . . . We remain committed to fighting until every Palestinian is home again. . . . When I say Palestine, I mean all of historic Palestine, from river to sea.”  Hill also called for the “liberation of Palestine” and asserted that it was his “duty to support Palestinian resistance.”  That sounds like something straight out of the Hamas Charter, which calls destroying Israel the “liberation of Palestine” and makes it a “duty” of all Muslims to oppose Israel (and slaughter every Jew).  

• In his April 2018 speech, Hill also falsely accused Israel of an “apartheid system,” and again falsely accused the Jewish people of being “invaders” in the land that the Jewish people have lived in for 3600 years.  Hill railed against the purported “occupation of Palestine” and “ugly occupation of Palestine.”  Hill declared:  “Palestinians are rendered second-class citizens in their very own lands, while immigrants, foreigners and invaders are allowed to come into a land and uproot the people and stay there.” Hill also praised Malcolm X for saying the “occupation is wrong in 1964, even before the Naksa” (the pejorative name for Israel’s victory in a defensive war in 1967).  Hill is thus eminently clear that he wants to eliminate all of Israel to establish an Arab Palestine. 

• Also in his April 2018 speech, Hill also praised SNCC for “standing up and saying Zionism is evil!”  Hill’s assertion that the Jewish right to self-determination is “evil” is the epitome of antisemitism.  As U.S. Ambassador to the UN Daniel Patrick Moynihan stated in his famous speech blasting the UN’s horrendous 1975 “Zionism is racism” resolution:  this is a “terrible lie that . . . will have terrible consequences.”

• Also in the same speech, Hill also openly supported Hamas’ “March of Return” – Hamas’s violent riots and attempts to invade Israel, in response leader Yayha Sinwar’s calls to murder Jews and eat Jews’ livers and butcher and rip out Jews’ hearts.  Hill then attempted to twist routine airport security screenings at Ben Gurion airport– necessary to stop innocent people from being killed – into “ritual state violence.”  Despicably, Hill also falsely accused Israeli “settlers” (Jews) of pouring bleach and urine onto the heads of Palestinian children – another disgusting, vicious libel reminiscent of medieval blood libels against Jews, used to promote anti-Jewish pogroms.  

• Also in his April 2018 speech, Hill opposed U.S. financial assistance for the Iron Dome anti-missile defense system that stops some of Hamas’s thousands of rockets from murdering Jews.  Hill also absurdly said that the “Iron Dome is used to justify the disproportionate force of Israel into Gaza.”  

In other words, Hill has engaged in a longstanding pattern of making repeated antisemitic defamatory statements calling for Israel’s destruction and promoting violence against Jews – both before and after CNN fired Hill. 

Calling for violence and Israel’s destruction endangers lives: On Sunday (Dec. 10), there was a stark reminder of the real-life consequences of failing to strongly confront antisemitic incitement to violence:  Palestinian Arab terrorists shot seven innocent Israeli Jews waiting at a bus stop, including critically shooting a pregnant Jewish woman in the stomach, her husband, and two young girls. Heartbreakingly, the critically injured pregnant woman’s baby – who was delivered prematurely after the shooting – died soon afterwards.  This is Palestinian Arab “resistance”: murdering innocent Jewish babies.  Hamas and Fatah have murdered and maimed thousands of innocent Jews.  Christians also continue to be targeted by the same sort of radical Islamist violence: On December 11, at the Christmas market in Strasbourg, France, Islamist Cherif Chekatt shot and killed 5 innocent civilians, and wounded 12, while screaming “Allahu Akbar.” 

Allowing Hill to remain on staff at Temple University and to hold the prestigious Steve Charles Endowed Chair sends an appalling message to Jewish and pro-Israel students and faculty.  It sends a dangerous message to haters of Jews and Israel, promoting violence.  To rehabilitate Temple’s good name and stand up against antisemitism on campus, Hill should be removed from his position.

Freedom of speech does not include freedom to call for murder or violence against Jews, to call for the destruction of a sovereign Jewish State, or to promote and teach vile, outright falsehoods against Israel and the Jewish people.