Marc Lamont Hill: Peace, everybody. You are listening to The Classroom and The Cell Podcast. This is your brother, Marc Lamont Hill, and joining me, of course, is
Mumia Abu-Jamal: Mumia Abu-Jamal Africa. How you like that?
Marc Lamont Hill: I love it, man. Now I’m sick, man, I’ve been running around. Man, I got a little cold. Glad it’s not COVID, but it’s kicking my butt, man, I need, I need some of them, home remedies.
Mumia Abu-Jamal: Well, honey and garlic. How about that?
Marc Lamont Hill: No, I like that. That’s good. Honey and garlic is a good thing. I need to take both of them cuz I can’t afford to slow down. I can’t afford to slow down. I have been paying attention to the news, as I know you have, this holiday season, and one of the things that has come up recently, of course, is the question of Palestine. And it’s been going on since October 7 that the national attention, the global attention, is fixed on it. But it’s an interesting moment, because now that we’re a few months into this war on Gaza, the question is, are we going to continue to pay attention, or are we going to turn our heads away? And is this going to become something that’s just normal and accepted?
Mumia Abu-Jamal: That’s a good question. But I think that what is happening is so extraordinary to behold and on such a scale, right? That it’s going to be hard to turn away. I mean, it’s hard to look too because it’s so painful, but it’s going to be equally hard, if not more so, to turn away, because what we’re seeing is kind of the apartheid state dropping its mask. And remember, the brother Bishop Desmond Tutu and the scholar Achille Mbembe, they’ve spoken and written, I think, from a deep place, from their knowledge of what apartheid is. To see apartheid in a different part of the world, not in an African state, but a polity, in a state where both Israelis and Arabs live together. And, man, you cannot look at that war and not see that this is something, some real apartheid stuff going on, I mean, on a massive, massive scale.
Marc Lamont Hill: It’s so obviously apartheid, it’s so obviously genocide, you know. And the world is beginning to see it. It’s beginning to become clear that this is not a proportionate or reasonable response, whatever you think about October 7th, right? And I think there are a lot of us who have said, “Look, October 7th was awful.” We just got to remind ourselves that history didn’t begin on October 7th. But regardless of what you think about October 7th, and now we’ve gotten tens of thousands of Palestinians killed.
Facility Recording: This is a call from Pennsylvania State Correctional Institution, Mahanoy. This call is subject to recording and monitoring.
Marc Lamont Hill: Dude, 1.7 million are displaced as well. I mean, this is ethnic cleansing. This is ethnic cleansing.
Mumia Abu-Jamal: Use the word I mean, use the word. And it’s [unclear] true. And listen, if this ain’t a war on Gaza, what would a war on Gaza look like?
Marc Lamont Hill: Right, right. What would a war look like?
Mumia Abu-Jamal: Yeah, you know. And you know, I mean, if this wasn’t like, disproportionate, what would proportion look like?
Marc Lamont Hill: Right.
Mumia Abu-Jamal: The rhetorics that politicians use in wars, I mean, as people who’ve grown up and carry the Appalachian Americans, even us African Americans, we don’t have to go very far, perhaps 20 years when the Iraq and Afghanistan wars happen.
Marc Lamont Hilll: Yeah.
Mumia Abu-Jamal: And know that states lie to create the conditions for war and to justify war. If you think back to 2003 you had the biggest demonstrations in the history of the planet Earth. You know, bigger than anything we could–given our communication systems at those times. These were huge, vast anti-war populations. I mean anti-war demonstrations by vast populations, and the president, then George W. Bush, said something crazy like, “Well, I don’t listen to fringe groups.” Like, seriously dude? You know this is a war
Facility Recording: This is a call from Pennsylvania State Correctional Institution, Mahanoy. This call is subject to recording and monitoring.
Mumia Abu-Jamal: …weapons of mass destruction. You know, all of that, you know. And so it was a–I call it a neocon fever dream. And you know, a military-industrial complex orgasm, you know. And they did all that, and, you know, lo and behold, 20 years later, they slink away, you know. And if those, here’s the other side of that, if you can do that, it’s like the “Oops” exception, right? “Oops. We were wrong.” So, because it’s a blunder, it’s not a crime.
Marc Lamont Hilll: Right. “We just had bad information. We just thought that they were there.”
Mumia Abu-Jamal: “We thought the weapons were there,” you know?
Marc Lamont Hilll: Yeah man, and they still holding on to that.
Mumia Abu-Jamal: “Bad intelligence”. Come on man.
Marc Lamont Hilll: This still holding on. I interviewed John Bolton last year, earlier this year, and he was still holding on, peddling the same lies about Saddam Hussein, the same lies about al Qaeda, the same lies about these alleged weapons of mass destruction and uranium enrichment and all the stuff that was proven to just be a flat-out falsehood, and they will go to the grave peddling these lies. I wanted to ask you a question, though, because I was, you know, you go back to you go back to the old days. You a old head. So, when you thinking about the ‘60s and the ‘70s, how much was Palestine on the radar of Black, of Black radicals, of people like you, who, you know, knew everything from the Panthers to MOVE to, you know, just affiliate, you know, activist streets, like how much was Palestine on the radar?
Mumia Abu-Jamal: It was there. And it was there, if you think back, that’s when you saw the emergence of the PLO, right? And they were a presence. And the PLO had a very interesting relationship with the Black Panther Party, thanks to Eldridge. Eldridge made contacts. There were relationships. And you know, some, some working together. And then, if you recall, from your–not from your life, but from your studies–the United Nations came out with a declaration that Zionism is racism, and the party ran it in their paper, and it caused a scandal. But you know, if you, if you read the writings of the Zionists, they’re actually racist in reverse in this sense: I’m trying to think of the name of the guy who wrote the definitive book on there, and his name is escaping me, he said something to the effect like he wanted Israelis to be, you know, blonde and blue, blue-eyed and that kind of and it’s like crazy when you think about it because…
Marc Lamont Hill: Yeah, man.
Mumia Abu-Jamal: Yeah. Where’s that coming from? And it shows you that in Jewish consciousness, based on their experience in Europe generally, and in Germany specifically, they had developed this intense kind of self hatred, right? And they were trying to reflect an Aryanized vision of like an Aryan-Jew. It’s crazy.
Marc Lamont Hilll: It’s the complexities of race and identity around these issues is incredibly, you know, fascinating. I’m not familiar with the particular book you’re talking about, but, but I do know I’ve been done doing some reading lately,
Mumia Abu-Jamal: Herzl. Theodore Herzl.
Marc Lamont Hill: and it’s wonderful, personal– oh, you talking about the father of modern Zionism. Yeah … Herzl was interesting, right? He’s a secular Jew. Jewishness for him was primarily not a religious identity, but a national and ethnic identity, you know, and and there are scholars. Noura Erakat has a wonderful essay in one of the Harvard law journals, you know, when she talks about how for European Jews arriving in Israel created the space to achieve whiteness, a whiteness that was unavailable to them in Europe, you know, they were rejected in Europe, they were victimized, they were subjected to pogroms and hatred, and they were killed, and they were exiled all throughout history. And so, the construction of Israel allows them to change.
Mumia Abu-Jamal: Several 1000 years.
Marc Lamont Hilll: Yeah, that’s right, that’s right, that’s right. And there’s a, there’s a, I’m gonna go full pop culture on you for a moment, but there’s a show for, a Jewish dating show that comes on Netflix. There’s one for Indians, there’s one for White folk, there’s one for Black, you know, there’s all these dating shows. But one is for Jewish people, Jewish Matchmaker. And one of the challenges that some of the girls have, the Jewish women, who have–both in the United States and in Israel, is this idea is that the men want a certain kind of look, right? And the look ain’t like their moms. The look’s not like their family. And so, like you said, all of us throughout the globe, you know, kind of bring in these different ideas around who or what we should look like. And it’s even more fascinating in Israel, because the majority of people in Israel are not Ashkenazi anymore. They’re Mizrahi, right? They’re brown. They’re brown folk. It’s a fascinating moment, man, I’m excited.
Mumia Abu-Jamal: They’re pulling my plug, but we gotta finish this up, because we gotta go somewhere with this.
Marc Lamont Hill: Oh, we definitely gon go somewhere. Look … ain’t nothing wrong with having two parts. I know you got to go, and we got this call in late, but I’m glad we got it in my brother, you go handle your business. I love you, man. Love you too, and we’ll talk soon for part two on Palestine.
Mumia Abu-Jamal: That sounds like a plan.
Marc Lamont Hilll: All right, my brother, talk to you soon, On the MOVE.
Facility Recording: The caller has hung up.
All right, everybody, you’ve been listening to The Classroom and The Cell with Mumia Abu-Jamal and Marc Lamont Hill. As you know, these calls are coming from the dungeons of Pennsylvania State Prison, so we can’t control how long the call is or how short the call is. This one was a little bit shorter, but we’re going to keep it going. We’re going to continue the conversation as soon as possible. We’ll be talking about Palestine, we’re talking about the black-radical tradition, and we’ll be talking about what it means to keep the suffering of Palestinians in general and Gazans in particular at the forefront of our minds and our political solidarity work. Alright y’all until then, stay tuned to the Marc Lamont Hill Official YouTube channel. Check out all the previous episodes of The Classroom and The Cell as well as everything else that’s on the channel. Also hit that subscribe button. If you feel so inclined, hit the join button so we can continue to build and expand this platform. All right, y’all talk to y’all later. Peace.
These commentaries are recorded by Prison Radio.