Case Description
Due to a technical glitch, our public comments portal for cases related to the "From the River to the Sea" phrase closed earlier than planned. To ensure everyone has a chance to share their input, we've reopened it for 24 hours. The portal will now close at 12pm BST on May 23rd.
These three cases concern content decisions made by Meta, all on Facebook, which the Oversight Board intends to address together.
The three posts were shared by different users in November 2023, following the Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7 and the start of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. Each post contains the phrase “From the river to the sea.” All three were reported by users for violating Meta’s Community Standards. The company decided to leave all three posts on Facebook. For each case, the Board will decide whether the content should be removed under Meta’s policies and according to its human rights responsibilities. Numbers of views and reports are correct as of the end of February 2024.
The first case concerns a comment from a Facebook user on another user’s video. The video has a caption encouraging others to “speak up” with numerous hashtags including “#ceasefire” and “#freepalestine.” The comment on the post contains the phrase “FromTheRiverToTheSea” in hashtag form, as well as several additional hashtags including “#DefundIsrael.” The comment had about 3,000 views and was reported seven times by four users. The reports were closed after Meta’s automated systems did not send them for human review within 48 hours.
In the second case, a Facebook user posted what appears to be a generated image of fruit floating on the sea that form the words from the phrase, along with “Palestine will be free.” The post had about 8 million views and was reported 951 times by 937 users. The first report on the post was closed, again because Meta’s automated systems did not send it for human review within 48 hours. Subsequent reports by users were reviewed and assessed as non-violating by human moderators.
In the third case, a Facebook page reshared a post from the page of a community organization in Canada in which a statement from the “founding members” of the organization declared support for “the Palestinian people,” condemning their “senseless slaughter” by the “Zionist State of Israel” and “Zionist Israeli occupiers.” The post ends with the phrase “From The River To The Sea.” This post had less than 1,000 views and was reported by one user. The report was automatically closed.
The Facebook users who reported the content, and subsequently appealed Meta’s decisions to leave up the content to the Board, claimed the phrase was breaking Meta’s rules on Hate Speech, Violence and Incitement or Dangerous Organizations and Individuals. The user who reported the content in the first case stated that the phrase violates Meta’s policies prohibiting content that promotes violence or supports terrorism. The users who reported the content in the second and third cases stated that the phrase constitutes hate speech, is antisemitic and is a call to abolish the state of Israel.
After the Board selected these cases for review, Meta confirmed its original decisions were correct. Meta informed the Board that it analyzed the content under three policies – Violence and Incitement, Hate Speech and Dangerous Organizations and Individuals – and found the posts did not violate any of these policies. Meta explained the company is aware that “From the river to the sea” has a long history and that it had reviewed use of the phrase on its platform after October 7, 2023. After that review, Meta determined that, without additional context, it cannot conclude that “From the river to the sea” constitutes a call to violence or a call for exclusion of any particular group, nor that it is linked exclusively to support for Hamas.
The Board selected these cases to consider how Meta should moderate the use of the phrase given the resurgence in its use after October 7, 2023, and controversies around the phrase’s meaning. On the one hand, the phrase has been used to advocate for the dignity and human rights of Palestinians. On the other hand, it could have antisemitic implications, as claimed by the users who submitted the cases to the Board. This case falls within the Board’s strategic priority of Crisis and Conflict Situations.
The Board would appreciate public comments that address:
- The origin and current uses of the phrase: “From the river to the sea.”
- Research into online trends in content using the phrase.
- Research into any associated online and offline harms from the use of the phrase.
- Meta’s human rights responsibilities in relation to content using the phrase including freedom of expression, freedom of association, and equality and non-discrimination.
- State and institutional (e.g., university) responses to the use of the phrase (e.g., during protests) and the human rights impacts of those responses.
As part of its decisions, the Board can issue policy recommendations to Meta. While recommendations are not binding, Meta must respond to them within 60 days. As such, the Board welcomes public comments proposing recommendations that are relevant to these cases.
Comments
FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA PALESTINE WILL BE FREE.
The fact that anyone finds this offensive just goes to show how hellbent the Zionist state of Israel is in obliterating the existence of the native people of the land. This chant is anti colonial and anti imperialist and even if Meta finds a way to ban it, trust us when we tell you that truth will prevail. You cannot silence humanity.
The fact that the phrase "From The River to The Sea" being censored in this day and age is absolutely abhorrent behavior on a social media conglomerate as big as Meta, a company championing supposed open access to anyone to voice themselves to the internet. We cannot continue with semantics while a phrase that does not even involve anything violence is being debated. Muslim and non-Muslim Arabs need to be left alone, especially when all they want is their right to live. To live a life free from manufactured islamophobia of the West.
I are concerned about significant and disproportionate censorship of Palestinian voices through content takedowns and hiding hashtags, amongst other violations. These restrictions on activists, civil society and human rights defenders represent a grave threat to freedom of expression and access to information, freedom of assembly, and political participation.
The sentence is used by terrorists groups with a clear intent to justify the indiscriminate murder of civilians and there’s no reason to pretend is not.
Palestine has been occupied, colonized and brutalized for over 76 years. “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is a declaration of hope, resilience & resistance. It is born of the Palestinian dream of an end to the occupation, the dream of decolonization, national self-determination and Palestinian liberation.
Why are we worried about phrases? What about the American people. Homelessness is out of control, people that never expected their country to let them down, has let them down! All that money you send to a country that is able to benefit from all the necessities that the people sweating to make that money can’t get any of and you worry about a phrase. America has enemies all over the world and you are worried about a peaceful people WITH NO ARMS! This is hilarious! They have no weapons, they are primarily a peaceful people and that’s why they were chosen. They never wanted nor needed weapons until that day when survivor of a terrible war showed up on a boat and the Palestinians offered them tea and a shoulder. You are supposed to be taking care of Americans not a foreign country. If I did that I’d be jailed but our government does it and benefits financially, they are traitors and should all be jailed under our the laws of our constitution!
To whom it may concern,
If statements like "From the River to the Sea" are banned (despite originating from Netanyahu and his cabinet in reference to land Israel will own), then surely every "racist" or incendiary comment will also be targeted from now on as well? For legal reasons, your company can't have double standards like this. It will result in a brand new, massive wave of continuous lawsuits that you will have to spend copious amounts of money fighting.
I have reported well over 100 comments wishing death to millions of Arabs. Comments that encourage rape. Comments that are racist/discriminatory against black people, Jewish people, disabled people, women... I reported a comment that called an infant a "fleshlight" and it's still there. I have screenshots of all of this, including the responses from your company that claim these didn't violate your terms and services. These are images I'm happy to share with lawyers building cases against you.
Believe that if you make your platform discriminatory against certain kinds of people, it will not maintain the same level of success. A new company will step up. Consider the damage your inherent bias, and blatant racism will do to your business.
I once easily took Israel at its word when it said things like “From the River to The Sea” is a call to eradicate Jewish people from Israel. I am a campaigner by design (ENFP) and because of that, I look deeper into things before touting my support of them. Full disclosure, as a child I learned the horrors of the Holocaust early, as we had family who were lost to the innumerable, unforgivable atrocities. Then, as now, I wanted to know everything and even did a 26 page report with full illustrations on A.H. trying to find out what kind of life could possibly create such a cruel person capable of such things. I was in 6th grade. Israel was never really a topic until the days of seeing Yasser Arafat on the news but even then, I didn’t watch enough tv to see him as anything other than another character and his words never met my ears, I only knew that there were always negotiations happening and no end in sight. Fast forward to now, I have a friend who served in the IOF, another made films in and about Israel, and for over a decade, I’ve been living in a predominantly Hasidic community. I have no religious affiliation and harbor no hate to anyone for theirs. I wish my neighbors a Good Shabbas and happily turn things on or off for them when needed. I am genetically part Ashkenazi myself (but apparently it doesn’t count because it’s from my mother’s father’s side). So when I started following Al Jazeera for my news during the 2016 election as the media bias here in the states (including your platform) offered no sane, balanced information; imagine my horror when I saw footage of Palestinians being killed, their homes stolen, and their children stolen, all of it was new to me and my very first thought was “how can ANYONE treat other people this way?! ESPECIALLY people who had been treated so abhorrently themselves!!!” I was shaken but overwhelmed with my own life and didn’t look further into it, thinking it must be bad behavior by some bad eggs. I soon realized it was policy and it didn’t sit right with me and as no one seemed to be talking about it, I would make a random post here or there and a single friend would chime in and agree how bizarre and unthinkable it was to see. The week leading up to October 7th, anyone can go look at the coverage (unless you’re in Israel) on Al Jazeera English, where visibly old Palestinian ladies were being spat upon and thrown to the ground, a mosque being entered by IOF and disrespected, I felt like things would come to a head soon, as I hadn’t seen so much pressure and harm towards Palestinians so consistently before. No one expected what happened next, even Israeli intelligence, and as we know now, they were told! As the horrors of Oct. 7th unfolded my First thoughts were being as shocked as everyone else, there had to be another way, this is not ok! My second thought was.. oh no, Netanyahu is going to wipe Gaza off the map. It was clear from day 1, calling ALL of the people of Gaza “animals” and cutting off food, water, and electricity?! That’s never ok by any standard, but anyone who was actually taught proper history knows it is TEXT BOOK how colonizers describe indigenous people before they kill them as if they’re doing the world a favor. By the second week of bombardment I was fully awake to the propaganda, the pandering, the clear lies. THE IOF are REALLY bad at lying. Worse, what I was seeing on our own TVs at home I KNEW was wrong immediately and a narrative was in full effect. Look, I even have sympathy for the Israeli youth because their innocence, lives and MINDS have been destroyed with lies and will be well into the future. I don’t forgive their actions, but I get it and it falls on the adults in the room pounding it into their brains that Arabs are bad and want their death. What an awful lie to tell. One such lie is what has me writing this today, the phrase “From the River to the Sea …Palestine will be free” being a call for the death of Jews, when it in fact is a call for freedom and equality in the land they lived and loved in for generations. Being against the clear genocide happening is not anti-Semitic and sadly the VERY hard work and millions of dollars spent to conflate Judaism with Zionism worked.. and still works on those who refuse to see it for what it is. The only thing this awful rhetoric does is further alienate and put Jewish people UNNECESSARILY at risk for the greed and hate shown by the Ultra Right Zionists that we fund, who have systematically bought and paid for our support politician by politician. As this is more of an opinion I will leave the citing of facts to the many who I’m sure will share, and a simple wiki look can tell you things like ..The Phrase of origin emanates from Zionists PRE Israel, and then was used in the 60’s by Palestinians, it’s about Palestinians (including Jewish Palestinians) living free in their own land. It was never about Muslims or Arabs against Jewish people..
From the River to the Sea.. everyone deserves to be free.
I find it extremely oppressive and fascist that meta would censor a simple harmless call for the liberation of oppressed people on their own land! According to International law, and human rights groups, Israel IS illegally occupying Palestine! Calling for the freedom of people who are being illegally occupied should be celebrated… not censored! What right does meta have to squash the human rights of those who are fighting for freedom, justice, and liberation WITHIN the boundaries of international law??? Meta has no right to take away my freedom of speech!!
The call for freedom of a group of people is in no way a call for destruction of any person or place.
There has been misuse of the word “antisemitic”.
This phrase is advocating for freedom from oppression for the Palestinian people.
There are many Hasbara and bots that report comments all day. They should not be validated.
From the river to the sea is not antisemitic and does not call for the genocide of Jews.
It means from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, the wish for Palestine to be free from it's occupiers. Who first came to Palestine in 1948 and started taking over Palestine which forced more than 350k of it's population to be expelled. The occupiers don't give the same human rights as the occupiers have. So we wish Palestine to be free.
Since this issue dose not pertain to my specific field of expertise, which is physics, I can only comment very briefly and solely on the basis of straightforward logic.
1) It is totally absurd to consider a catchphrase expressing the desire of a people to be free in a certain geographic space to be a racist threat to another people constituting a majority in a country established in part of that space.
2) This becomes even more absurd considering that the largest political party in that country had long ago already established as one of its principal goals to extend the sovereignty of the country over that entire geographic space.
This calls for the genocide of all Jews. Please ban.
STOP SILENCING PALESTINIANS VOICES!!! IF YOU ARE BANNING PALESTINIANS CREATORS YOU ARE COMPLICIT IN GENOCIDE!!! THERE IS NOTHING ANTISEMITIC ABOUT THE PHRASE ‘TO THE RIVER TO THE SEA’.
I have been disproportionately effected by Meta as well as many many other Palestinians due to our fight for freedom and liberation. I have been educating people using facts and have refrained from any graphic content. I am constantly being restricted by Meta and unable to comment, like, follow, and add captions to my posts. Some days I maybe make 3 comments hours apart and then get a restriction that typically lasts a minimum of 1 week. I had a post taken down which I immediately appealed. It took Meta 1.5 months to reinstate the post despite a turn around time of 4 days as stated in the appeal process. During that time I was not recommendable on the fyp, explore, or reels channel. My posts were constantly being hidden and my followers telling me they do not see posts from me and have to visit my page to see them. Despite them interacting with the content. Which typically would allow the content to be presented to them seeing as how it aligns with them and pairs with their interests. I also consistently lose 20-40 followers daily. I have gotten more than 100 messages of people telling me they have not unfollowed me and that the system unfollowed them from my account. There are websites such as wordsofiron.com which allows pro Israeli supporters to access and mass report Palestinian and pro palestinian content which they deem “anti-Israel”. Also, to boost pro Israel content. Unfairly targeted via mass reporting as well as Metas algorithms. Meta also introduced a “limit political content” setting which was automatically set to limit for every user. For users who are not aware they did not know that a setting had been changed without their permission. My comments constantly get deleted and it could be something as simple as “thank you ❤️”. Metas pop up would state I am trying to gain follows, likes, etc via deceiving others. Not sure how comment like that could be connected at all? The share to story button is also constantly moving. One day it will be the first button after pressing the Cursor. Somedays id have to scroll way after share to “X” and it would be all the way at the end. I have seen Israelis and pro Israelis share content that has since been proven as lies. Such as “beheading babies, burning them in ovens,”. CNN for example has apologized for peddling that as misinformation. Despite that Meta has kept those posts up even tho I have reported them. Stating to me “it did not violate guidelines”. Or when they call us Amalek (animals) in posts or “wipe them out” “kill them all”. Meta has not taken down any of those posts after I have reported them as well as many others who have reported them as well. Sometimes I cannot even like a comment that has the flag of Palestine, which I am a Palestinian and it ties into my identity. Or comment “free Palestine” without my comment being hidden or deleted. Yet I could like any other comment that did not say “palestine” or have the flag. Exactly what Israel did in the 60’s when they banned us from flying our flag to which the watermelon became a symbol as it reflects the same colours. Did you know, even the colours of the flag for painting or drawing were banned as well? Every time I contacted Meta pro they would say “stop posting the content you are posting and you wont get restricted or my reach limited”. An excuse would be made up everytime that there is no restriction yet if I get 10k likes on a post I get 50k views but a content creator eating food on camera will get 1000000 views with the same engagement. All of my content is original content and of myself and myself only. Nothing graphic or violent. Meta has systematically participated in censorship aiding and abetting the genocide of my people which they have also done with the Rohingya genocide. Resulting in real world harm. See Amnesty international reporting for detailed information on Metas role in violence and contribution to dehumanization and genocide.
Meta, Instagram, and all of social media companies must stop the banning and restricting of Palestinian content creators, their profiles, and their comments and videos. Doing this takes away Palestinian’s freedoms of speech and freedom to protest and that is not only against the law but extremely unjust in every way. Sofia media is supposed to be a space for everyone to share who they are andhow they feel, but when meta restricts Palestinian’s it completely ruins the whole point of social media. These companies must also divest from any ties it has to israel and speak out again the genocide on Palestinians!!
Hi, with your concern regarding the saying "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" to be clear, is not hate speech towards Jews. The saying is refering to ending the war in Gaza where thousands of Palestinians (including women and childern) and being unjustly murdered due to war crimes commited by Israel. This is not a saying supporting hamas, it is about ending the war, calling for a ceasefire, and ending the occupation in Palestine. Palestinians, as human beings, deserve the right to be free and live life, in their own homes and communities, without worrying if they are going to die the next day. The saying itself refelcts this belief and is centered around wanting peace.
I follow many Palestinian and pro-Palestinian Meta accounts. The understanding of the phrase, "From the river to the sea" that I've gained from following these accounts is that it means liberation of the Palestinians from Israeli occupation and oppression. Not once have I encountered an instance when it was used as a call for violence against Jews. To me, it's a beautiful phrase that implies collective liberation, and should not be censored.
Meta is actively suppressing the content of Palestinian voices and news outlets!! We have been baring witness to the atrocities Israel has been committing for 7 months...but in reality, it's more like 100+ years of planned destruction finally coming to fruition. Israel is a settler colonial state of supremacy achieved with the blood of the Palestinian people!! From the River to the Sea is a call for liberation, NOT annihilation!! Why does the freedom and comfort of one people come with the death and destruction of another?! THAT'S WRONG!! Your choice to enact barriers of free speech and expression is FASCIST!! Palestinians deserve freedom and safety just like everyone else, but they have been living a nightmare for nearly 100yrs under occupation, degradation, and second-class citizenship. Stop twisting the statements of liberation used by people looking to break free from apartheid rule!! Israel has systematically trapped the people of Gaza in a death trap or carpet bombing and starvation. THE REPEATED KILLING OF CHILDREN IS PURE EVIL!!! You can't censor everything, the truth is out, the youth are learning about the decades of lies they've been fed...and so are adults! The Palestinian people have been blocked from representing themselves for decades and we're here to say ENOUGH!! WE ARE ALL PALESTINE AND WE STAND WITH THEIR CALL FOR FULL LIBERATION AND STATEHOOD!! FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA, PALESTINE WILL BE FREE FROM OCCUPATION AND APARTHEID!!!