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Robert Herbst responds to CNN’s firing of Marc Lamont Hill: “Hill’s provocative call for freedom for Palestinians in the whole of historic Palestine (or Greater Israel), in a single state guaranteeing rights for both peoples, did not mention Jews or Israelis, leaving him vulnerable to the false attack that he was advocating eliminating Jews from the Holy Land.”

The orthodox anti-Zionist group Neturei Karta is often kept at arms length by the left because of its socially conservative views. Filmmaker Heather Tenzer reached out to Neturei Karta for her upcoming documentary, The Rabbis’ Intifada, and shows how the group has been able to build bridges with conservative religious Muslims, thereby offering a challenge to our ideas about activism.

The firing of Marc Lamont Hill by CNN for espousing Palestinian human rights shows the historical commitment by western institutions to Zionism as the answer to Jewish insecurity in the west. But now Zionism is in crisis, and Hill sought to bear witness to the actual conditions in Israel/Palestine– and was labeled an anti-Semite.

The demands for Marc Lamont Hill’s head from supporters of Israel that evidently led to his firing by CNN as well as expressions of solidarity from Palestinian supporters show that the end of the two-state-solution is bringing about open ideological conflict in the U.S. establishment, with supporters of Palestinians being accused of anti-Semitism, much as they are in the U.K.  

CNN fires commentator Marc Lamont Hill for saying Palestine should be free “from river to sea,” but it allowed Israeli official Michael Oren to tell former AIPAC aide Wolf Blitzer to say that Palestinians fabricated video that children were killed by Israeli soldiers, even as an executive at CNN’s parent company was writing speeches for Benjamin Netanyahu, no problem.

Liberal Zionist hero Tzipi Livni says Netanyahu is paving the way to the “nightmare of Zionism” — a greater Israel with a Palestinian majority, when the true “vision” of Zionism is a Jewish majority, which can only be attained by “separation… separation… separation.” Her words echo George Wallace calling for segregation forever in 1963, but it didn’t last.

Nada Elia binge watches all four parts of the Al Jazeera documentary “The Lobby” that was leaked online earlier this month. While there were no bombshells, the series shows astroturfed pro-Israel groups on campus, but Elia notes, “the lack of conviction is painful, almost pathetic, when the fakes come face to face with the real grassroots, the student organizers with SJP.”