Protests against Israel have been popularising the slogan, ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’. This refers to all of historic Palestine, as it was called under the British Mandate. The entire territory has been subjected to a racist settler-colonial apartheid regime. This regime has perverted Judaism into a racist supremacist ideology, analogous to white supremacy.
Palestinians have no rights or weaker rights than Israelis. Gaza has been under Israeli siege since 2007, turning the territory into the world’s largest open-air prison; it has increasingly become a concentration camp, and then a genocide zone since early October. In the West Bank, their land is systematically stolen by Jewish settlers, who are aided and abetted by Israel’s army and police. In Occupied East Jerusalem, Palestinians have no citizenship, but are granted Permanent Residence Status, which can be rescinded anytime by Israel. Their homes are stolen by settlers, who obtain legal cover from the Israeli Supreme Court. Within 1948 Israel, Palestinians are second class citizens, with lesser rights than Jewish Israelis. According to Israel’s Basic Law, ‘national self-determination is solely for the Jewish people’, thus embedding the second-class nature of Palestinian citizenship.
Towards the necessary remedy, the slogan ‘From the river to the sea’ demands that all Palestinians in historic Palestine be free and equal citizens. This would require decolonizing the settler-colonial regime. Palestinians should be ‘neither dominated by others nor dominating them’, argues the Palestinian-American writer Yousef Munayyer, https://jewishcurrents.org/what-does-from-the-river-to…
The slogan has a long history, with deployment by the colonised and colonizer. On one side, in the 1960s the Palestine Liberation Organization declared its aim to establish a single democratic state throughout historic Palestine between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea. On the other side, according to the 1977 platform of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party, https://www.independent.co.uk/…/andy-mcdonald-downing… “between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty”. This made explicit what has often been implicit in Israeli strategy.
When used by pro-Palestinian forces, the slogan has come under attack by British politicians. According to the Home Secretary, it may be terrorist or antisemitic, on grounds that it advocates the destruction of Israel. The Prime Minister attacked the slogan as ‘deeply offensive’ to many people. Skills Minister Robert Halfon said that it is ‘horrific, scary and frightening for Jewish people’.
Indeed, the slogan may be offensive or frightening to some Jews who support Israel as a Jewish supremacist regime. By contrast, many other Jewish people oppose the regime. To call the slogan antisemitic is to stereotype all Jews as pro-Israel. This can lead people to blame all Jews for Israel’s crimes, thus encouraging antisemitism in the name of supposedly countering it. In sum, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” does not encourage hatred or violence; rather, it demands democracy and equal rights for all.
