CNN Fires Commentator After He Calls For ‘Free Palestine’!

Local Editor

CNN on Thursday said it had ended its contract with one of its political commentators after he used a phrase associated with Palestinian landowners– “a free Palestine from the river to the sea” – during a speech at the United Nations.

“Marc Lamont Hill is no longer under contract with CNN,” the network announced in a statement.

Lamont Hill, a professor of Media Studies and Urban Education at Temple University who also hosted the syndicated television show “Our World with Black Enterprise,” spoke at the United Nations on Wednesday at an event held for the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.

“We have an opportunity to not just offer solidarity in words but to commit to political action, grassroots action, local action, and international action that will give us what justice requires and that is a free Palestine from the river to the sea,” Lamont Hill said.

“Palestine from the river to the sea” was a slogan of the Palestine Liberation Organization beginning with its founding in 1964, demanding the original Palestinian state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea and rejecting control by the “Israeli” occupation of any land in the region, including areas controlled by the Zionist entity prior to 1967.

Lamont Hill defended his remarks and suggested that Palestinians have a right to use resistance against “Israelis” to achieve their aims. He said “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 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 said.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team