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Marc Lamont Hill’s Apology Is Not Accepted

Marc Lamont Hill’s Apology Is Not Accepted

Hill didn’t use a dog whistle, he used the equivalent of a bullhorn to shout for the destruction of Israel “from the river to the sea,” a century-old call for the ethnic cleansing of Jews.

That dog whistles are now a hot topic of discussion is easily the dumbest thing about 2018.

When CNN fired Marc Lamont Hill over his speech at the UN where he talked of freeing Palestine from river to the sea, it was said that the expression in question was a dog whistle.

Hill used that language in his apology a few days later:

Rather than hearing a political solution, many heard a dog-whistle that conjured a long and deep history of violence against Jewish people.

This take put the onus on us Jews for being too touchy, it’s also completely and totally wrong.

From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free is a slogan adopted by the Arab terrorist groups starting with Yasser Arafat’s PLO.  Since the 1960’s that slogan has been heard at pro-terrorist rallies and the assemblies of international organizations worldwide.  It refers to the territories from river Jordan to the Mediterranean, the land encompassing the state of Israel in its entirety, which said groups claim for themselves.

I’ve consulted Urban Dictionary for the definition of dog whistle, and came up with this:

Dog whistle is a type of strategy of communication that sends a message that the general population will take a certain meaning from, but a certain group that is “in the know” will take away the secret, intended message. Often involves code words.

A dog whistle is a communication that normal people would gloss over, believing it’s an ordinary expression, but the in-group members immediately recognize as something of their own.  For instance, the OK sign is just an OK sign to ordinary Americans, but to some neoNazis it’s coded gesture that signals group membership.  To them, it has double meaning.  To be sure, some paranoid-minded Social Justice Worriers hear dog whistles everywhere, too.  Notoriously, they’ve accused Zina Bash, the stuff member with Mexican and Jewish roots who assisted then SCOTUS nominee Brett Kavanaugh during Congressional hearings, of flashing the dreaded OK sign in front of the cameras as a mean of communicating with the neoNazis on C-SPAN.  She did not, but for a small minority the ordinary OK sign has a double meaning.

There is no such double meaning in the expression from river to the sea, Palestine will be free. It conjures up absolutely nothing about “a long and deep history of violence against Jewish people”.  Being 100% irrelevant to the Babylonian exile, pogroms, the Holocaust, or the Jewish Nakba, it reefers to one thing, and one thing only: The destruction of the Jewish state by Palestinian terrorists.

And yet, that language obviously refers to something; there has to be some sort of landmass between the two bodies of water it has to be applied to.  It’s possible that Hill used the expression even though he didn’t understand its meaning.  The esteemed academic comes across as just that kind of shallow attention whore who uses words he doesn’t quite comprehend because the words make him and his audience feel a certain way and give him the veneer of intellectualism.  I remember him bloviating on Fox, where over the years he’d provided other contributors with multiple opportunities to react to his statements. But on CNN Hill was not a Farrakhanesque demagogue, but an actual opinion maker.

Yet even if the pundit wasn’t familiar with the meaning of the slogan, he fully supports the goal for which it calls.  Again, from Hill’s “apology”:

For many, justice will come from a two-state solution. For some, like me, justice will come through a single bi-national democratic state that encompasses Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. I strongly believe that this is the best method to achieve peace, safety, security, and self-determination for both Israelis and Palestinians. Justice requires that everyone, not just a single side, is free and equal.

In other words, he understands that “many” have, oh, a different idea of justice, but elimination of the Jewish state is how he himself sees it.  And if one is inclined to further grant Hill the benefit of the doubt, to believe that maybe he’s talking about some kind of harmonious coexistence between the terrorist-led Palestinian state and the Jews, a coexistence that would magically materialize if only the Jewish state is abolished, rest assured he does not.  Here is a video, via @SJP_Leaks, of Marc Lamont Hill endorsing violence against Israel:

Hill apparently believes he’s a smooth talker — otherwise, why write an apology?  The fact that he’s writing that apology ads an insult to injury:

As a communicator, I must take responsibility for the reception of my message. In this case, the final words of my speech became a dangerous and harmful distraction from my political analysis. Rather than talking about the plight of Palestinians, or engaging in tough but necessary conversations about a positive and successful way forward for both parties, the bulk of the conversation has been about my choice of words. To this extent, I did no favors to Israelis or Palestinians. For this too, I am deeply sorry.

If only our communicator could find a better way to sugarcoat genocide!  Hill is the type to think that the speaker has the responsibility for not expressing his ideas in the most inoffensive manner.  Cooke noted that Hill’s job is to explain why people get offended and to demand repentance.

Except that of course if people oppose what he says, it’s not really his fault because we, Jews, heard a dog whistle “[r]ather than hearing a political solution”.  It is we who are too sensitive on the issue of eliminationist rhetoric, he himself merely misspoke in this prepared speech.  Don’t get so offended, Jews.

What is so strange about our political moment, is that we often ban speech because some in the audience may consider it offensive, and hurt feelings are perceived as violence, and yet the actual content of speech is glossed over.  It’s all words, and words about words, and the feeling they perhaps produce in some sensitive individuals.

One hundred years ago we’ve elevated offensive speech to the status of an art form when Marcel Duchamp installed urinals in an art gallery to offend.  Working in the same vein, 1970’s London Punks wore swastikas with the explicit intention to offend, especially to offend the World War Two veterans.  Arguably, some of the Wisconsin high school students who gave Nazi salute in a prom picture probably wanted to offend (I’m sure it’s a deeper problem for at least some of them, and don’t blame the hicks in the Midwest, we have the same problem in San Francisco Bay Area).

So, we’ve been hang up on the idea of offensive speech for a while.  Yet to say that Hill’s words were merely offensive is to minimize their significance.  And in fact, whatever I feel when I hear them, I don’t feel offended.  The real problem with calling for elimination of the world’s only Jewish state is ethnic cleansing.

It’s not that I need to trim my ego, nurse my wounded pride, and make space for Duchamps of the 21st century, it’s that Hills words call for very concrete actions, and I will work very hard to make sure that everyone understands what Hill proposes, and that it never happens.

Hill’s apology was offensive because it merely insulted my intelligence.  Hill’s original from river to the sea opus was pure evil.  It was evil because it’s tied to objective reality which is evil.  Hill’s domain is that of words, words about words, and feelings they might produce.  He is a demagogue.

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Comments

DINORightMarie | December 11, 2018 at 7:57 am

Your point is well taken, and the content is absolutely what we need to read and hear!

But I do have one point of contention: your example on the “OK” symbol – it is not true, it’s a hoax.

For instance, the OK sign is just an OK sign to ordinary Americans, but to some neoNazis it’s coded gesture that signals group membership. To them, it has double meaning. …
…Zina Bash, the stuff [stet] member with Mexican and Jewish roots who assisted then SCOTUS nominee Brett Kavanaugh during Congressional hearings, of flashing the dreaded OK sign in front of the cameras as a mean [stet] of communicating with the neoNazis on C-SPAN. She did not, but for a small minority the ordinary OK sign has a double meaning.

The media made this so, by lying about this made-up meme, this trolling, with so-called “truth tellers” like Vox claiming this is NOT a “trolling” by 4chan folks but is in fact a real “white power” symbol.

Because of the lying FAKE NEWS media, and others, latching onto this and then running it as a true “white power” symbol, it is now laughingly adopted by those haters.

But it is in reality a hoax, and the “OK” hand symbol was never intended to be anything more than a trolling of the lunatic left who sees everything as racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. and hears “dog whistles” everywhere……..

    A better example would have been the use of the rainbow by LGBT hate groups. While the rainbow is a natural phenomenon, it also has religious significance to Jews and Christians. LGBT hate groups appropriated the rainbow and are turning it into a symbol of hate, violence and intolerance.

    The LGBT rainbow is becoming the progressive movement’s swastika and a symbol of evil.

      The rainbow flag has been a Gay & Lesbian symbol since the end of the ’70s (before the ever-expanding acronym started). That it’s used by radical hate groups within that community no more reflects on it than does the use of crosses by radical hate groups within the Christian community. In both cases they’re using it not for hateful reasons but because it’s the established symbol of the community within which they arose.

        Lying again like a good progressive?

        The rainbow used to be a symbol for so-called environmental groups. It was hijacked by the Gaystapo.

        In fact Greenpeace named its doom ship, the one the French torpedoed in the Mururoa atoll in 1985, the “Rainbow”.

        Try again.

          Milhouse in reply to cucho. | December 11, 2018 at 6:43 pm

          1. You are the liar here.

          2. How dare you call me a “progressive”? Them’s fighting words. It also shows how ridiculously off base you are.

          3. The rainbow was not hijacked by anybody. The Gay & Lesbian community came up with the rainbow flag on its own and has been using it since the late 1970s.

          4. The Greenpeace ship was not called Rainbow, it was Rainbow Warrior. It was launched in 1978, a month after the original 8-striped Gay Pride flag made its first appearance.

      4th armored div in reply to Recovering Lutheran. | December 11, 2018 at 11:08 am

      After the flood, G‑d promised Noah that He would never again bring a flood that would destroy the world. A rainbow is a reminder of this covenant that G‑d made with Noah, his descendants, and all living creatures. Therefore, upon seeing a rainbow in the sky, we recite the following blessing:

      בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה’ אֶלוֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם זוֹכֵר הַבְּרִית וְנֶאֱמָן בִּבְרִיתוֹ וְקַיָם בְּמַאֲמָרוֹ

      Baruch ata Ado-nai Elo-heinu melech ha’olam zocher ha’brit v’ne’eman bivrito v’kayam b’ma’amaro.

      Blessed are You, Lord our G‑d, King of the universe, who remembers the covenant, and is faithful to His covenant, and keeps His promise.

If a dog-whistle is a code phrase that sounds non-offense to the public but has a secret meaning to some select group, then every phrase the media declares to be dog-whistle is in fact not.

Hill apparently believes people on the right are too stupid to recognize what he’s up to. I have long thought he’s too stupid to realize he’s wrong.

“the stuff member” “it reefers” we’ve been hang up on the idea’

I see a secret code here.

“Hill’s original from river to the sea opus was pure evil. It was evil because it’s tied to objective reality which is evil.”

The fact that CNN grasped the difference between ‘dog whistle’ and ‘pogrom’ and still possessed a shred of moral decency to act upon it is the real story.

Now, if only MSNBC would follow suit by canning that Jew hating racist, Al Sharpton…

There is a lot of blame to go around here. First, there is Affirmative Action, a totally false premise and the creation of positions that were not earned. To imagine that Hill has a Ph.D. makes education look like a joke. Second, the PC msm has created a “Black privilege” that prevents anyone from pointing out how stupid the speaker is if they are black. Third, Hill is nothing but a street hustler who has gotten exposure on TV and has been elevated to the position that what he says matters. It doesn’t!

Bull horn? That’s appropriate since this guy is usually full of, and spouts, more bull “dust” than is contained in the animals in 2,000 critter cattle feed lot.

Arguably, some of the Wisconsin high school students who gave Nazi salute in a prom picture probably wanted to offend (I’m sure it’s a deeper problem for at least some of them,

They did not give any nazi salute. They were waving to their parents, as the photographer instructed them to do.

Marc Lamont Hill is a racist and he proved it when he stated that the Tea Party people were racists because the lived through the Jim Crow era.

As a non-Jew who is moderately knowledgeable about the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis (probably more knowledgeable than the average American but less than many of LI’s readers), I guarantee you Marc Lamont Hill knew and meant exactly the connotation of “from the river to the sea” abhorred by pro-Israel Jews.

To say or imply that Jews unfortunately and incorrectly interpreted this as a dog-whistle is to ask us all to be so gullible so as to simultaneously believe Hill is a serious expert and activist on this issue while being completely unaware of the all but exclusive connotation of the phrase he used to wrap up and put a bow on his speech. The connotation anyone with the slightest awareness of this issue immediately perceives as an anti-Israel call to arms.

And what unfortunate dog-whistle misinterpretation are Jews reflexively given to when Hill soberly speaks of the Israelis poisoning the Palestinians’ water?

Try to imagine a prominent Jew using the n-word in a prepared speech and later pleading ignorance of the most common and abhorrent connotation.

And try to imagine a black anti-Semite with Jewish blood on his hands with his own TV show on a major network. Someone whom a Democrat 2020 presidential front runner visits to kiss the ring.

Imagine. It’s easy if you try.