The pearl clutching and Zionist propaganda lines associated with the slogan ‘From The River to the Sea: Palestine Will be Free”’ is indicative of the lack of serious debate and activist culture in the United Kingdom, the rest of Europe and, to some extent, the United States. But with the rash of student occupations and encampments, this may be changing.
According to Zionist talking points ‘From the river to the Sea…’ is a statement which aims to destroy the ‘State of Israel’ and is genocidal because any such action would inevitably involve the genocide of the Jews in ‘Israel’. Large sections of the political mainstream go along with this nonsense either because they believe it, because they think it’s in their interests or because they are bullied and intimidated into it by the Zionists.
For example the New York Times reported,
“The official congressional rebuke of Ms. Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress, said the phrase was ‘widely recognized as a genocidal call to violence to destroy the state of Israel.’ The top White House spokeswoman disavowed it from the West Wing, saying that it was “divisive” and that many considered it hurtful and antisemitic.
“The phrase, which Ms. Tlaib has defended as ‘an aspirational call for freedom, human rights and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction or hate’.”
In the UK the Guardian reported:
“The home secretary, Suella Braverman, tweeted after recent UK protests – in which thousands chanted ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ – that the slogan was ‘widely understood as a demand for the destruction of Israel’. She added: ‘Attempts to pretend otherwise are disingenuous’.
“Hers is a commonly held view, albeit one that is vigorously countered by those who regard such characterisations as an attempt to close down debate.
“In 2021, the Palestinian-American writer Yousef Munayyer argued that those who saw genocidal ambition in the phrase… did so due to their own Islamophobia.
It was instead, he argued, merely a way to express a desire for a state in which ‘Palestinians can live in their homeland as free and equal citizens, neither dominated by others nor dominating them’.”
But, in truth, the slogan absolutely does mean the ending of Israel as a state form, the dismantling of the “Jewish state”. The reason is that it is impossible for Palestinians to live as “free and equal” citizens without the creation of a new state in which such desires can actually be accommodated.