CUNY Professor and Al Jazeera correspondent 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, went on a tirade against pro-Israel Congressman Ritchie Torres (D-NY) in which he claimed that Palestinians "absolutely" have the right to commit violence against Israelis.
In his video, Hill stated that "making it seem as if Israel is this innocent nation-state surrounded by Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis is ridiculous."
Hill criticized Torres for calling for a demilitarized Palestinian state, claiming that this would just be another form of occupation.
"You keep talking about the free Palestine movement as if it's bound up in violence, as if an oppressed and occupied people don't have a right to resist," he claimed. "I'm not going to adopt a respectability politics that says that somehow, we can only support Palestinians if they say they're nonviolent. Sometimes you've got to be violent. When you're fighting an oppressive, violent state, you absolutely have to be violent."
Rep. Torres said in response to Hill's screed, "Marc Lamont Hill went into a tirade against me for calling for a nonviolent demilitarized Palestinian State."
"He accuses me of lying about Israel being surrounded by the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah. Never mind the mass murder of 1200 Israelis by the former or the displacement of 100k Israelis and the firing of 7k rockets by the latter. To say nothing of the Iranian nexus between the two," Torres said.
He continued, "He insists Palestinians 'absolutely' have a right to be violent. Does that right to violence extend to the execution of the six hostages by Hamas? Does it include the abduction of an infant? The kidnapping of a Holocaust survivor? He dismisses any rejection of violence as 'respectability politics.'
"The Western Anti-Zionists, glorifying violence from the comfort of their ivory towers, are doing an irreparable disservice to the very Palestinians they claim to champion," Torres said.
Marc Lamont Hill has a long history of anti-Israel activism and defense of the genocidal Hamas terrorist organization. In 2014, he published an opinion piece lamenting the existence of Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system, a purely defensive system that shoots down rockets aimed at populated areas, because it reduces the leverage Hamas has against Israel.
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.
Less than a month after the October 7 massacre in which 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were murdered and more than 250 taken hostage, Hill denied that Hamas is even a terrorist organization during an appearance on Briahna Joy Gray’s “Bad Faith” program and argued that it should be considered a legitimate "government" instead.