'From the river to the sea' much more than mere words
Hateful words always precede hateful deeds
Author of the article:Warren Kinsella
Published Jun 01, 2024 • Last updated 1 day ago • 3 minute read
“From the river to the sea.”
Or, sometimes: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
Most of the time, it’s the shorter version that we see.
Lately, we see it on signs and banners at Canadian and American and European university campuses. We hear it chanted by the (few) students and (many) non-students at those illegal occupations, the ones some media benignly refer to as “encampments.”
From the river to the sea.
The first time you hear it, it sounds pretty innocuous. It doesn’t seem to explicitly advocate violence. In fact, nothing is identified in it, apart from Palestine. It lacks the vehemence and violence of “genocide.”
It’s a mistake, however, to regard “From the river to the sea” as anything other than the flip side of the “genocide” coin. Genocide is the crime; “From the river to the sea” is the remedy. They are connected and have been used – alternatively or together – a huge number of times online since Oct. 7.
On the search engine Bing alone, those words now produce more than 136,000,000 results.
The slogan has been around for decades but was seized upon by the terrorist Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in the ’60s and ’70s – and, later, formally adopted by Hamas killers in their 2017 revised Charter. Article 20 of Hamas’ governing constitution states, “Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea.”
For some idiotic pro-Palestine protesters (who do not seem to understand the full connotations of the slogan), and for Hamas and its ilk (who do), the “river” referred to is the Jordan, to Israel’s East; and the “sea” is the Mediterranean, to the West. Geographically, that is all of Israel. Logically, it means wiping out the Jewish state.
Still, it’s just words. Are they a problem?
Yes, they are.
Ask Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor, the brilliant lawyer who heads the internet hate watchdog CyberWell. Based in israel, CyberWell finds online hate – these days, overwhelmingly hate against Jews – and pushes social media platforms to remove it, or at least make it show up less often in searches.
The big platforms, like Meta – owner Facebook and Instagram, which together have five billion users worldwide – have in the past removed content that promotes violence and hate. The QAnon conspiracy theory’s slogan, for example, is, “Where go one, we go all.” Meta started terminating accounts that promoted this phrase a few years ago, because it was what the experts call “militarized content.”
Montemayor wants Meta and the other social media mavens to do likewise with “From the river to the sea.” Last week, she appeared before Meta’s Oversight Board, which makes those decisions. Her detailed report makes for compelling reading.
In it, CyberWell writes: “During the current unprecedented surge in antisemitism worldwide following the violent October 7 attacks against Israeli civilians, this phrase is being used … to harass, target, or commit violence against Jews.” Examples include synagogues from Philadelphia to Barcelona being vandalized with the slogan, painting it where the Black September terror group slaughtered 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games, and using it “as a rallying cry in multiple illegal college solidarity encampments when physically restricting, harassing, threatening, spitting on, and physically harming Jewish students, press, and members of the public.”
Montemayor says: “It means something very clear to Jews. It is a veiled term to advocate committing genocide against Jews living in Israel, and to destroy the Israeli state.”
It isn’t what the pro-Hamas, anti-Israel cabal claim the words mean that matters. It is how the words are heard by the intended victims: Jews.
Montemayor acknowledges the phrase can mean different things to different people. She also agrees freedom of speech needs to always be protected. But when that slogan is being used with acts of violence and hate against Jews, that’s when it’s true meaning becomes clear, she says.
“We can’t ignore the real world damage (the slogan) is causing,” she says. “It’s being used to incite and mobilize violent acts.”
Hateful words always precede hateful deeds. Hate against Jews – or Christians, or Muslims, or Sikhs or Hindus – is always expressed first in words.
Right now, all over Canada, those deceptive words, “from the river to the sea”, are being heard and seen everywhere. And Jews know what those innocuous-sounding words truly mean:
The end of Israel and, later, them.
"From the river to the sea." Or, sometimes: "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free."
torontosun.com
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That sequencing appears to “imply” that Hamas would continue to play a role in incremental arrangements mediated by Egypt and Qatar - a “potential” clash with Israel's determination to resume the campaign to eliminate the Iranian-backed Islamist group (???).
The primary sticking point has been Israel's insistence that it would discuss only temporary pauses to fighting until Hamas is destroyed. Hamas, which shows no sign of stepping aside, says it will free hostages only under a path to a permanent end to “the” war….& by “the” war do they mean “this” war currently until next time? 
In his speech, Biden said his latest proposal "creates a better 'day after' in Gaza without Hamas in power" (?????).
www.bbc.com
