Last year, a little over a month after the events of October 7, professor and commentator Marc Lamont Hill asked me to appear on his YouTube Channel for a debate. Which I did. And despite ceding “home ground advantage”, I believe I achieved my goal of influencing at least some of the intellectually honest among his audience positively towards Israel, especially those who may have been sitting on the fence before watching the debate.
But it was tricky because Lamont Hill steered the discussion a certain way and we ran out of time to discuss in more depth.
Also, especially towards the end, he tried to “score some points” against me. One of those moments was when I asked him whether Hamas are a terror organization and whether he condemn October 7.
Truth be told, I was not surprised by his responses, despite what he thought. That is because I did my research before the debate and had seen this interview he conducted with Hamas spokeshit Osama Hamdan, as well as when he interviewed former Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon.
I wanted to get him to condemn them and October 7 on his own YouTube channel, in front of his own audience, which I managed to do.
Alas, Lamont Hill seems to have changed his tune since then when it comes to Hamas:
CUNY professor Marc Lamont Hill defended Hamas during a Congressional Black Caucus panel discussion with Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) on Thursday, calling the terrorist group a “democratically elected organization that has been systematically undermined.”
“As a non-Palestinian, it is not my job to tell people how to liberate themselves. It is not my job to tell people how to be free,” Hill said.
“When we have the conversation of Hamas, don’t just talk about them like they’re some irrational, crazy people,” he said. “[View Hamas] against the backdrop of Israeli settler states that sexually abuse people, that steal land, that kill people, that never hold on to a treaty.”
Hill added that there is “room in a political discourse to have a critique of Hamas, but they are a democratically elected organization that has been systematically undermined.”
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Hill was speaking at the panel discussion on “The Struggle for Black and Palestinian Liberation,” which featured Tlaib, outgoing Rep. Cori Bush (D., Mo.), Palestinian Georgia State Rep. Ruwa Romman, and former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan.
Bush nodded during Hill’s comments while Tlaib sat silently. Hasan was the only panelist to lightly challenge Hill, saying that Hamas shouldn’t be described as “democratically elected” since Gaza hasn’t held an election in nearly two decades.
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When an audience member asked the panel why none of them had mentioned Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attacks, Hill said it was not his place to criticize the terrorist group.
“I feel like we have this reflexive tic in American media and politics where we have to say, ‘But Hamas, what about Hamas? Denounce Hamas.’ And I think that it’s unnecessary and it’s excessive,” said Hill.
“Let’s be very clear, Hamas hasn’t surrendered because they’re still under brutal occupation. Hamas hasn’t surrendered because Israel has never given the Palestinian people one minute, one second, of self-determination, freedom, and liberation,” he said.
Truth be told, this is not the first time he seems to have reverted to his pre October 7 justification for terrorism. For instance:
Besides making a mockery of his attempt to score points against me when he suggested I was surprised he condemned Hamas and October 7, it also makes a mockery of his attempt to score points against me by arguing over a nuanced translation of one of his tweets following the death of a palestinian Arab terrorist who tried to murder Israeli civilians:
Marc, for us, this isn’t about trying to prevail in debates. It is about trying to survive.
And it disturbs me that you are on the side of those who want us dead.
