FAQ 8
Isn’t “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free” a call for the elimination of the Jews?
The allegation
“From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free” is a genocidal, antisemitic chant used by pro-Hamas demonstrators demanding the destruction of the state of Israel and the extermination of Jews who currently live between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
Brief rebuttal
Most pro-Palestinian protesters using the slogan view it as simply meaning equal rights for Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs in the area of historic Palestine. Far from there being genocidal intent, many support a two-state solution. They are seeking a situation in which Israeli Jews will no longer dominate and Palestinian Arabs will not be subordinate and confined to ghettos.
More detail
“From the River to the Sea” is a phrase that has been used not only by Palestinians, but also by Israelis, since the 1960s. Its use by Palestinians has to be seen in the context of their having been denied the right to self-determination, ever since Britain’s promise in 1917 to support the establishment of a national homeland for Jews in the region. In parallel it was making equivalent promises to Arab leaders about the same territory, but these were never honoured.
After Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights in the 1967 war, the call for a free Palestine “from the river to the sea” gained traction among those who believed that all this land should be returned to the Palestinians. But it soon also came to represent the vision of a single secular democratic state with equality for all living in the territories between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
In 1977, Likud (the party of current Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu), declared in its founding charter: “Between the sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.” This use of the phrase unambiguously excludes Palestinians. Indeed, the commitment to Greater Israel was enshrined in Israel’s “Basic Laws” in 2018 with the “Nation State of the Jewish People” law. According to this, the right to national self-determination in Palestine “is unique to the Jewish People”: “the State views the development of Jewish settlement as a national value, and shall act to encourage and promote its establishment and strengthening.” This commitment is one of the “guiding principles” of the current Israeli government, which stated that “the Jewish people have an exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the Land of Israel”, including “Judea and Samaria”.
Just two weeks before the October 7th attacks, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a speech at the UN General Assembly in New York brandishing a map of what he promised could be the “New Middle East”. It depicted a state of Israel that stretched continuously from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Gaza and the West Bank, as Palestinian lands, were erased.
Nimer Sultany, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) law lecturer, argues that the call for Palestine to be free expresses the “the need for equality for all inhabitants of historic Palestine”. It is an English language chant used on demonstrations in Western countries. “It doesn’t rhyme in Arabic. The controversy has been fabricated to prevent solidarity in the West with the Palestinians.”
Palestinian-American writer Yousef Munayyer says the chant expresses 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”.
As a protest chant, it is a rejection of the apartheid nature of Israel, not the Israeli people or Jews. It offers a vision of equality for both peoples in the same land.
Further resources
1. ‘From the river to the sea’: where does the slogan come from and what does it mean?, Guardian Explainer, 31 Oct 2023
2.3. Federica Marsi, ‘From the river to the sea’: What does the Palestinian slogan really mean?, Al Jazeera Explainer, 2 Nov 2023
4. Jonathan Cook, How a slogan became bigger news than the murder of babies in Gaza, Middle East Eye, 27 November 2023
5. Jonathan Este, ‘From the river to the sea’ – a Palestinian historian explores the meaning and intent of scrutinized slogan, The Conversation, 16 Nov 2023
6. Deborah Maccoby, “Blindness” reviewed – and insight offered, a review of Blindness by Hadley Freeman, JVL, 17 Jun 2024
7. Rashid Khalidi, It’s Time to Confront Israel’s Version of “From the River to the Sea”, the Nation, 22 Nov 2023
“Far from being a mere slogan, the phrase captures both the longtime ambitions of the Israeli right and the reality Israel has imposed on Palestine since 1967.”