By: Sarah Rubenstein

Marc Lamont Hill accused Israel of denying “citizenship rights and due process to Palestinians just because they are not Jewish,” and expressed his support for the BDS movement

CNN political commentator and Temple University Professor Marc Lamont Hill condemned Israel in a speech at the United Nations on Wednesday, saying that he thinks that there needs to be “a free Palestine from the river to the sea.”

CNN's Marc Lamont Hill appears to call for violence against Israel and for the elimination of Israel, says, "Justice requires a free Palestine from the river to the sea."

The phrase "from the river to the sea" is a phrase used by those who believe Israel should be eliminated. pic.twitter.com/26TL205Ylb

— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) November 28, 2018

Hill accused Israel of denying “citizenship rights and due process to Palestinians just because they are not Jewish,” and expressed his support for the BDS movement. Hill stressed that, although peace is an ideal, “we must not romanticize or fetishize it. We must promote nonviolence at every opportunity, but cannot endorse narrow politics that shames Palestinians for resisting, for refusing to do nothing in ethnic cleansing.”

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) responded to Hill’s speech, calling his comment “divisive” and “destructive” in an email to the Jewish Journal.

“Those calling for ‘from the river to the sea’ are calling for an end to the State of Israel,” Sharon Nazarian, the ADL’s senior vice president for international affairs, wrote to the Journal. “It is a shame that once again, this annual event at the United Nations does not promote constructive pathways to ‘Palestinian solidarity’ and a future of peace, but instead divisive and destructive action against Israel.”

Dani Dayan, the Consul General of Israel in New York, called Hill  a racist, a bigot and an antisemite on his Twitter.

Lamont Hill called for the elimination of the State of Israel from the map. Previously he expressed his admiration for antisemite Louis Farrakhan. MLH is a racist, a bigot, an antisemite. The fact that he is all this while in the payroll of @CNN and @TempleUniv is appalling

— Dani Dayan (@AmbDaniDayan) November 29, 2018