Lately, the opinion has taken root in Israel, and amongst many Jews and non-Jews internationally, that the slogan ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ is antisemitic, calling for the destruction of the state of Israel and the ethnic cleaning or homicide of all Jews residing in it.
Jewish organizations and different political gamers world wide are demanding a ban on the usage of this slogan. Within the UK, the Labour Occasion suspended MP Andy McDonald for utilizing the phrase at an illustration, and the Soccer Affiliation banned gamers from utilizing it on their private Fb accounts. In Germany the state of affairs is much more drastic. In Berlin, for instance, the usage of the slogan at demonstrations is prohibited and demonstrators who shout it are arrested. The rightwing newspaper Die Welt went so far as operating a podcast headline‘ Free Palestine is the new Heil Hitler’. No much less!
In Israel, Haaretz journalist Ravit Hecht wrote that the slogan is a name ‘for ethnic cleansing, similar to the one that took place in the Gaza ‘envelope’ [on October 7]… It’s not a few return to the 1967 borders or a cessation of the occupation, however the annihilation of the Jewish nationwide residence and the expulsion of Jews from this place.’ This interpretation, nonetheless, is untruthful.
To start with, it’s value evaluating the slogan to the equal place amongst Jews (and non-Jews) who help Larger Israel. For if we settle for {that a} Palestinian calling for the ‘liberation of Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean sea’ desires to expel the Jews from Israel, then equity requires that the alternative also needs to maintain true: that anybody who has ever supported Larger Israel – from the poet Nathan Alterman (probably the most necessary Israeli poets, who recognized politically with the Labour social gathering) and the signatories of the Larger Israel Manifesto in 1967 to the present authorities and the general public that supported it on the poll field – really helps the annihilation or expulsion of the Palestinians.
Picture: Susan Ruggles / Supply: Wikimedia Commons
However this too could be inaccurate. In reality, to demand Israeli management over your entire space between the river and the ocean is primarily meant to disclaim the Palestinians their proper to self-determination, and to hunt to forestall them from establishing a nationwide residence and having equal civil and particular person rights. In observe, this place means imposing apartheid, because the human rights NGO B’Tselem, to call only one distinguished instance, concluded in its January 2021 report, ‘A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid.’ Within the eyes of the overwhelming majority of Jews in Israel, and possibly on this planet, it is a authentic political place.
Stopping any chance of a Palestinian state has all the time been Israel’s coverage, one which the settlement constructing within the Occupied Territories is supposed to make sure. This coverage has been intensified beneath Benjamin Netanyahu, who in January 2024 publicly vowed to withstand any try and create a Palestinian state and to take care of Israeli management from the river to the ocean.
Not all supporters of this coverage essentially help ethnic cleaning or the homicide of all Palestinians between the river and the ocean. However sadly, many do. This sort of violent resolution has lately gained help amongst a really massive part of the Israeli political spectrum. The 11 ministers and 15 Knesset members from numerous rightwing and non secular events who, along with many hundreds of different Israeli Jews, participated within the ‘Resettle Gaza’ convention on 28 January actually belong to this group. The ‘decisive plan’ revealed in 2017 by Bezalel Smotrich, who since 2022 has been Israel’s finance minister and a minister within the Ministry of Defence accountable for the Israeli ‘civil administration’ within the OPT, additionally clearly goes in these violent instructions.
From the river to the ocean
Within the Palestinian context, the that means of the slogan ‘From the river to the sea’ is way more advanced. When decoding it, you will need to be traditionally correct and to keep away from anachronism. The slogan’s that means is determined by the context by which it’s used and, in fact, on the intention of those that use it.
The slogan refers to Palestine, that’s, the geographical space between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River previously outlined as Necessary Palestine. The Palestinians take into account this territory to be their historic homeland. Even when a good portion of Palestinians are keen in precept to agree on a compromise that may imply the institution of a sovereign Palestinian state within the West Financial institution, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, which collectively represent about 22% of Necessary Palestine, they nonetheless regard all of Palestine as their homeland.
From the Palestinian perspective, their homeland was taken away from them by the Nice Powers – notably Nice Britain – and given to a gaggle of Jewish (on the time primarily European) settlers. These settlers assumed management over most of their land and turned them, by drive, right into a minority. From this attitude, which is traditionally truthful, all Palestinians residing on this space, and even these exterior it, exist in a state of inequality and lack of freedom.
Palestinians in Gaza have been beneath siege for 16 years and at the moment are beneath a murderous (and plausibly genocidal) assault. Palestinians within the West Financial institution are beneath direct occupation and face the fixed stress of ethnic cleaning (notably in zone C). Palestinians in East Jerusalem are thought of residents slightly than residents; and Palestinians throughout the Inexperienced Line get pleasure from equal rights solely partially. Refugees who had been expelled or fled in 1948 and weren’t allowed to return don’t even have the precise to stay of their homeland; and the identical goes for his or her descendants, in fact.
The overwhelming majority of Palestinians can due to this fact rightly declare that, at current, the territories of their homeland, i.e., Palestine, will not be ‘liberated’. By this they imply that the Palestinians residing in it don’t have freedom and equality as people, and that the Palestinian individuals collectively is being denied its proper to self-determination.
How, then, can this example be modified and Palestine obtain liberation from this discriminatory and exclusionary regime? There are numerous opinions on this. What follows is a really schematic and incomplete map of positions, that are in actual fact way more dynamic, advanced and contested in response to altering circumstances.
Palestine will probably be free
Amongst Palestinians, as amongst Jews, there’s a hole between the dream of generations for liberation and full management of all of Palestine, and the way in which they realistically and politically think about life in liberation. Some see the one practical choice – even when this implies solely partial liberation – because the institution of two states, one way or the other recognizing the refugees’ proper of return. That is the official stance of the PLO, and lots of Palestinians used to help it. Many Israelis additionally help the two-state resolution. However as a consequence of Israel’s longstanding settlement and annexation coverage, it now appears unfeasible.
Others assume that the way in which to liberate Palestine is to determine a single secular and egalitarian state for all its residents, Jews and Arabs. Many Palestinians world wide, within the Occupied Territories and in Israel, help this (as do some Jews and even Israelis). The Palestinian–Israeli political social gathering Balad helps a barely totally different model of the thought: reworking Israel throughout the 1967 borders from a Jewish state right into a secular state with equal rights for all its residents, whereas establishing a Palestinian state within the Occupied Territories.
Nonetheless others assume that the liberation of Palestine might entail numerous federative or bi-national preparations. Such concepts have turn out to be more and more fashionable amongst Palestinian and Jewish-Israeli intellectuals lately. The joint Israeli–Palestinian motion ‘A Land for All’, for instance, has translated this concept into detailed political plans.
Then there are those that equate liberation with an Islamic dhimmi regime, in response to which Jews who stay in Palestine may have an inferior standing however will probably be protected by the authorities. Some sections within the Hamas Constitution of 1988 help such an association and a few inside Hamas envision it as a political resolution. Others certainly envision the expulsion and even homicide of the Jews as the final word liberation of Palestine. This group consists of secularists who see Algeria as a mannequin of decolonization, and a few in Hamas and extra radical teams just like the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, to not point out ISIS and extremist Jihadist teams.
This latter technique can be supported by some sections of the Hamas Constitution of 1988. Nevertheless, it needs to be talked about that the 2017 addendum to the constitution (par. 20) accepts the thought of a Palestinian state alongside the 4 June 1967 borders (i.e. the borders previous to the 1967 warfare) as a ‘formula of national consensus’. Hamas has additionally proposed a long-term ceasefire (Hudna) with Israel a number of instances over time. There are even vital voices inside Hamas that decision for acknowledging the State of Israel.
Instrumentalising accusations of antisemitism
Exactly as a result of it’s so normal and offers no trace to a selected resolution, it’s tough to discover a Palestinian or a supporter of the Palestinian trigger who doesn’t determine with the slogan, ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’.
As Maha Nasser has proven, the slogan ‘From the river to the sea’ turned fashionable in Fatah circles through the decolonization struggles in Africa and Asia within the Sixties. The intention then was the institution of a secular, democratic and egalitarian state in all of Palestine, by which Jews would get pleasure from full equal rights, however with out the privileges that Zionism granted them. Since then, nonetheless, the slogan’s meanings have diversified, as we have now seen.
Whereas for the Palestinians it’s an expression of their authentic nationwide wrestle, for a lot of others it’s a normal expression of help for the Palestinian nationwide trigger and protest at Israeli mass atrocities. The slogan has been shouted by many, together with Jews and Israelis, at demonstrations world wide for years. It displays the truth that from a Palestinian perspective, the occupied homeland shouldn’t be solely the West Financial institution and the Gaza Strip, however all of Necessary Palestine. Nevertheless, it doesn’t remotely suggest the political method by which this homeland will probably be liberated. It’s thus, because the eminent historian Rashid Khalidi has concluded, a normal name for the liberation of all Palestinians, which is in absolute contradiction of the current actuality of full unfreedom of varied kinds.
Jews and non-Jews ought to perceive and acknowledge this truth. Labelling the slogan antisemitic is a strong device utilized by Israel and its supporters to disclaim the existence of the Palestinian individuals and its connection to the land, to entrench Palestine’s occupation, oppression, and elimination by Israel, and to silence its cry for freedom and rights together with amidst the plausibly genocidal assault now happening in Gaza.
After the 7 October bloodbath, the slogan gained an extra that means. Some in Europe and the US have used it to precise their help for the Hamas assaults, which they label as acts of decolonization and liberation of Palestine. On this context, the slogan is one in help of bloodbath, rape and mass atrocities.
Given the slogan’s numerous doable interpretations, together with its use to help Hamas’s crimes, it will be good if its customers discover methods to make clear what they imply. Some have certainly recommended modifying the slogan. In Berlin a protester recommended, ‘From the river to the sea, we demand equality’ (the signal was nonetheless taken down by the police). Leila Farsakh, a Palestinian-American political scientist, prefers ‘From the river to the sea, everyone must be free’. This focuses on the core of the Israeli settler colonial, apartheid regime – the elemental political inequality and negation of rights – and highlights the aspiration for freedom and equality for all these residing between the river and the ocean.
However reflecting on this slogan, which allegedly negates Jews’ very existence in Israel, should finally return to us, Israeli Jews, and to our lives in Israel. As a result of it’s appalling that Israel and its supporters blame those that chant the slogan for supporting genocide, whereas Israel commits warfare crimes which the ICJ has declared as plausibly genocidal. Israel has to this point killed greater than 30 thousand Palestinians, the overwhelming majority of whom are youngsters and ladies, displaced nearly all Gazans, made the Gaza strip uninhabitable and is intentionally ravenous your entire Palestinian inhabitants.
Furthermore, in Israel, genocidal public statements have turn out to be commonplace. Israel’s president Yitzhak Herzog claimed on 13 October 2023 that there are not any harmless residents in Gaza, thus successfully making all Gaza’s inhabitants authentic targets for assault. On 9 October, defence minister Yoav Galant declared a whole siege on Gaza: ‘There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed’. Tali Gottlieb, a Likud member of the Knesset, wrote on social media on 10 October that on, ‘It is time for Doomsday weapons. Firing powerful missiles without limits. Not simply flattening a neighbourhood, but crushing and flattening all of Gaza.’ Shimon Riklin, the senior political commentator of Channel 14, the federal government TV mouthpiece, stated on a primetime program on 17 December that ‘I don’t sleep properly with out seeing homes collapsing in Gaza … Extra, extra, extra homes and extra towers. In order that they are going to have nowhere to return to … They should keep in mind that they’re Amalekites … I’m all for warfare crimes.’ And Zvi Yehezkeli, a senior analyst for Channel 13, lamented that the IDF strikes within the first days of the warfare didn’t kill 100,000 Palestinians. And lately the influential Rabbi Eliyahu Mali urged the Israeli military to kill all youngsters and ladies in Gaza in accordance to what he perceives because the non secular Jewish regulation.
These are only a few of the greater than 500 Israeli public genocidal statements which were recorded lots of which had been quoted by South Africa within the ICJ case and had been requoted within the court docket’s ruling. The discourse and the temper prevailing in Israel has turn out to be explicitly and brazenly genocidal.
So, past the totally different meanings that individuals exterior Israel give to the slogan, there’s the straightforward however essential indisputable fact that even the heinous horrors of seven October can not obscure: the persistent and longstanding denial by the State of Israel and most of its Jewish society of the Palestinians’ simply and fundamental demand for full and equal private, authorized, civil and nationwide rights throughout the framework of no matter political resolution could emerge.
Denying such calls for appears as self-evident to most Israeli Jews because the air they breathe. It’s this denial that has led to the dehumanization of Palestinians and has culminated within the genocidal temper that’s prevailing in Israeli Jewish society right now and within the assault happening now in Gaza. This needs to be seen as the actual downside and never the authentic chant of ‘from the river to the sea: Palestine will be free’.
Earlier and shorter variations of this text had been printed in Hebrew in Sicha Mekomit on 3.12.2023 and in German in Geschichte der Gegenwart on 31.01.2024
