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
The term from the river to the see should not be a banned term.
1. From the river to the sea become popular after a terrorist attack as the voice supporting the action and the opposite of condemnation, that use is the proof of its intention. The frase is an evolution of the frase : min il-ṃayye la-l-ṃayye, lit. 'from the water to the water. Meaning - drowning the Israelis and been used in past generations.
If it had said from the river to the sea Palestinians would be free it would be about the people but currently meaning against others. I find it very offensive
From the river to the sea is a call for freedom and liberation of oppressed people everywhere - but especially to the Palestinian people that are being slaughtered by the genocide of the occupied state of Israel in Gaza & the West Bank.
Palestinians and most of the people of Gaza are semites — so you cannot call the phrase anti-Semitic. Period.
From river to sea is just words used to express freedom from oppression.
Banning the word would be banning a libration.
It would be interfering with the human struggle for freedom.
Anything trying to paint this antiseptic is a grave and lying. The agenda for them is to eliminate Palestine.
Don’t be the machine be the thing that helps freedom grow
This is the correct submission.
The phrase "From the river to the sea" is typically found in the phrase "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free." The phrase itself does not specify the river or the sea. Yet, it is meant to refer to the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. The phrase "Palestine will be free" implies that Palestine is not now free.
According to the Oslo Accords, the West Bank is split into three areas, A, B and C. Area A falls under the control of the Palestinian Authority. Area C falls under the control of Israel. Area B is jointly controlled.
Israel evacuated Gaza in 2005. From 2005 to October 2023, Gaza was controlled by Hamas. That control is now dissipating. The slogan "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free." preceded the Israeli response to the Hamas attack, murders and kidnapping of October 7th 2023.
If one thinks of freedom in terms of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the slogan might appear to be meant to apply to the West Bank and Gaza but not Israel. In terms of fundamental freedoms, Israel is free but the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority is not. Gaza under Hamas before the current Gaza war was even less free than the West Bank has been.
Yet, that is not the intent of the slogan. Freedom in the slogan is not intended to refer to freedom of expression, freedom of association and so on. It is meant to refer to freedom from Israel, freedom from Jewish rule. It is a form of antisemitism.
If Israel were an Islamic Arab state, instead of being a Jewish state, the phrase would not exist. "Freedom" in the phrase "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free." does not mean freedom for Palestinians. It means freedom from Jews. The phrase is a form of Jew hatred.
Hate speech takes a variety of forms. Sometimes it is explicit. Sometimes it is implicit, coded and euphemistic.
Antisemitism is the world's oldest hatred, having existed since pre-historic times. Because of its long history, the vocabulary of antisemitism is constantly shifting. There is a tendency to recognize older antisemitic statements but not newer ones.
Today, the phrase "The final solution to the Jewish problem" is easily recognized as antisemitic. Yet, it was not so easily recognized when first used. All the same, that phrase shares characteristics with the phrase "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free."
The phrase "The final solution to the Jewish problem" to those not familiar with its connotation might seem benign, a proposal to solve a problem. In theory, the phrase could even apply to the creation of the State of Israel. But that, of course, was not its intent.
Similarly, the phrase "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.", to those not familiar with its connotation, might seem benign, the advocacy of freedom. In theory the phrase could mean freedom of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Yet, here too that is not its intent.
There are, of course, many people who utter indirect, euphemistic, coded hate speech without realizing what they are saying. Yet, that ignorance, while it may excuse the speaker, does not excuse the phrase.
When it comes to coded antisemitic discourse, we do not need linguistic analysis to see the problem. We can see the problem from the result.
Antisemitic hate speech leads to attacks on Jews and Jewish property. There has been globally a sharp spike in antisemitic incidents - physical attacks on Jews, on Jewish institutions and Jewish property, both sparked and justified by people who use the phrase "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free."
The phrase or its variations have been used by Hamas and its supporters. Khaled Meshal, in 2012, when he was leader of the political wing said in a speech "Palestine is ours from the river to the sea and from the south to the north". The Hamas murders, rapes and kidnapping of October 7th, 2023 were the largest mass atrocity inflicted on Jews since the Holocaust.
The phrase was spray painted in Spanish in April 2023 on Maimonides Synagogue, the largest synagogue in Barcelona. Whatever one thinks of the Israeli response to the Hamas October 7th attack, the worshippers of the Maimonides Synagogue had nothing to do with it.
What one does with a phrase tells us more about its meaning than just the words. When the phrase "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free." and its variations are used worldwide to incite and justify attacks on Jews and Jewish property, the claim that the phrase is not antisemitic rings hollow.
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I am a Jewish American.
To us, “from the river to the sea” is a call for peace and justice - for equal rights for Palestinians from the river to the sea, who have existed under the longest military occupation in modern history.
It is an "aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate” - Rashida Talib, Congresswoman
It is "a demand for democratic coexistence between Jews and Arabs” - American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
It is a call for "justice, until all people, Israelis and Palestinians, between the river and the sea can live in peaceful liberty” - Andy McDonald, London labor PM
It is 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” - Yousef Munayyer, Palestinian-American writer
It is a call for "the return of [5.9 million] refugees who have been kicked out of their homes from 1948 till now." - Rama Al Malah, organizer with Palestinian Youth Movement
To ban this phrase for being “antisemitic” is to imply that Jews are only safe if we are violently oppressing millions of Palestinians. Please consider protecting the freedom of speech of so many Palestinians who are currently - yes - living under a military occupation that stretches from the river to the sea.
Palestinians and pro-Palestinians generally complement the phrase “From the River to the Sea” with “Palestine will be free” in demonstrations, protests, social media posts…etc. I agree with Meta’s original position that the phrase does not constitute a violation to its rules on hate speech, violence and incitement. It is an inspirational, almost poetic, slogan which is based on historical facts.
It declares an aspiration that Palestine and Palestinians desire and deserve to be free. It does not call for violence or hate against any people. Historically, Palestine was one state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, and Arab Palestinians whether Muslims or Christians lived in that state along with many Jews. International colonial powers divided historic Palestine and created the State of Israel. This was one political arrangement that reflected certain realities then. Other political options were available then and can be available in the future, including the establishment of one democratic state called Palestine where all its citizens are free and equal, whether Arabs or Jews.
The phrase does not constitute a violation to Meta’s rules on Dangerous Organizations and Individuals, as it predates the founding of Hamas and is widely used by Palestinians and non-Palestinians, including Jews and Israelis, who are not members or supporters of Hamas or any other organizations or individuals who fit Meta’s definition of “Dangerous Organizations and Individuals”. Hamas was established in the 1980s and the phrase has been used in Palestinian literature since the 1960s.
Since October 7th, 2023, the phrase has been used in countless pro-Palestine demonstrations, protests, speeches, written materials, and social media posts across the world, and they have been very peaceful. In fact, almost all the reported violence associated with any of those demonstrations and protests was directed towards the pro-Palestine demonstrators and protestors. In addition, there have been no reports for violence towards Israelis or Jews resulting from any online use for the phrase.
The phrase is categorically neither antisemitic nor anti-Israelis, as witnessed by the thousands of Jewish and Israelis participating actively in peaceful demonstrations and protests and chanting it with their fellow demonstrators and protesters around the globe.
You can refer to the Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe’s answer to an American interrogation in Detroit Airport when asked about the phrase in this interview recorded today, May 21. He answered: everywhere where there is a river and there is a sea and people living between them, they should be free.
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/5/21/ilan_pappe_airport_detention
Worth mentioning at the end of my comments is the fact that the Israeli Likud Party in its 1977 Election Manifesto used a similar phrase that read in full “Between the sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty”. This version clearly denies any non-Israelis their right of self-determination, or worse, their right to exist.
2024-004-FB-UA, 2024-005-FB-UA, 2024-006-FB-UA
Submission to the Meta Oversight Board on Posts That Include “From the River to the Sea”
By Jillian C. York, Paige Collings, Babette Ngene (Electronic Frontier Foundation)
Moderation decisions of “From the river to the sea” must be made on an individualized basis since the phrase has a significant historical usage that is not hateful or otherwise in violation of Meta’s community standards.
History and current developments
“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is a historical political phrase or slogan referring geographically to the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, an area that includes Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. The Arabic version of the slogan, “from the water to the water,” was first introduced in the region as a call against the British Mandate in Palestine in the 1930s. In one 2018 article, historian Maha Nassar explained that the slogan’s historical roots stretch well before the creation of Hamas and are as old as the Palestinian resistance against the UN partition of the land and in support of the establishment of a single, secular, democratic state. The phrase was then used by the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and later used by others as a call for a single democratic state for Arabs and Jews to replace Israel, also known as the “one state solution,” which has been part of Palestinian and some Israeli advocacy since the late 1960s.
Following the physical expansion of the Israeli state through the 1967 war, many people advocating for Palestinian liberation have used the slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” as a rallying cry for freedom. The phrase gained momentum during this period amongst a fractured Palestinian population hoping to gain liberation from both the Israeli government and those of Jordan and Egypt. Today, the meaning of the slogan for many continues to be one of freedom, liberation, and solidarity against the fragmentation of Palestinians over the land which the Israeli state currently exercises its sovereignty—from Gaza, to the West Bank, and within the Israeli state.
Hamas adopted the phrase in its 2017 charter, leading to the claim that the phrase is solely a call for the extermination of Israel. And since Hamas’ deadly attack on Israel on October 7th 2023, opponents have argued that the phrase is a hateful form of expression targeted at Jews in the West. In December 2023, the United States Congress passed Resolution 497 condemning "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" on the grounds that the slogan and its derivations are antisemitic and call for genocide and the destruction of the Jewish state. Similarly, college campuses across the United States have sought to clamp down use of the phrase for the same reasons.
Since October 2023, authorities throughout Germany have aggressively and almost unilaterally sought to censor any reference to “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” on the grounds that those speaking it are antisemitic or members of Hamas. The southern German state of Bavaria banned the slogan, regardless of the language it is uttered in, on the grounds that it is considered a symbol of a terrorist organization—in this case, Hamas. The Public Prosecutor’s office also announced that any uses of the slogan would be investigated and punishment would be the same as using a swastika or Nazi slogans. In the German capital of Berlin, police removed a banner which referenced “From the river to the sea” on the grounds that the phrase is an act of sedition by denying Israel’s right to exist.
And in March 2024, police in Berlin arrested a person for writing “From the river to the sea” on her personal social media profiles. Police also searched her apartment on the grounds of allegedly “using the symbols of unconstitutional organisations,” and confiscated three smartphones, two computers, and a hard drive. Similarly in Vienna, local police banned a pro-Palestinian protest as the inclusion of “From the river to the sea” in the invitations was considered a call to violence and erasure of Israel from the map. And in the United States, CNN reporter Marc Lamont Hill was fired for using the phrase “from the river to the sea” on air, while Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib was censured for the same.
Pushback against allegations of antisemitism and incitement to violence
But international courts have recognized that despite its co-option by Hamas, the phrase continues to be used by many as a rallying call for liberation and freedom that is explicit both in its meaning on a physical and symbolic level. The censorship of such a phrase due to a perceived “hidden meaning” of inciting hatred and extremism is thus an infringement on free speech in those situations.
This position was affirmed by two German courts in December 2023, who declared that “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” was a protected form of free expression and was not punishable in principle because it “objectively does not have any criminal interpretations.” The court in Cologne ruled that the phrase a protected form of freedom of expression unless expressly “directed at the Jewish population of Germany,” and rejected the “inflammatory allegations of antisemitism.” Similarly, the Hessian Administrative Court overturned a ruling by the city of Frankfurt which previously banned the phrase on the grounds that it is anti-Jewish and anti-Israel.
Similarly in the Czech Republic, the City of Prague municipality banned a demonstration on the grounds that the protestors' use of “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” was violent and antisemitic. Following a legal challenge, the Court ruled that the phrase could not be expressly understood in a violent regard, nor is it an express elucidation of antisemitism if not specifically directed in its use towards a specific ethnic group or their members, in this case Jewish people. The Court also ruled that the City of Prague had no legal foundation upon which to ban the December 5th demonstration.
Meta’s Responsibilities
Given the protected uses of the phrase, and despite the use of the phrase by a designated terrorist organization, Meta has a responsibility to uphold the free expression, especially of people who are persecuted, marginalized, and oppressed.
Marginalized communities that experience persecution offline often face disproportionate censorship online. Expression by and about Palestinians has been the target of censorship by social media platforms for many years, long predating October 7, and very much so after October 7. It is imperative that Meta recognize the responsibilities it has to its global user base in upholding the free expression, particularly of communities that may otherwise face censorship in their home countries.
While there may be cases in which “From the river to the sea” is used by antisemitic actors and could be righty banned in those specific cases, a blanket ban would constitute disproportionate censorship of a phrase which, to many of the people who utilize it, remains a slogan synonymous with freedom and liberation from occupation.
When Israel declared its independence in 1948 from Great Britain, Arabs in the region declared that they planned to annihilate the Jewish population of the new nation “from the river to the sea”. In other words, militant Arabs residing in and around 1948 Israel were calling for the total and complete ethnic cleansing of Jews from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Clearly “from the river to the sea” has never been a neutral phrase. It has been a call to extreme acts of violence towards a specific group of people. Indeed the Islamist terrorist group Hamas used the phrase in its 2017 charter and quoted the phrase again on and since the Oct 7 terrorist attacks in Israel. Devastatingly, the phrase has been given new wings by social media platforms that have failed to treat it as the hate speech that it is. Whether or not individuals today use the phrase to invoke violence, “from the river to the sea” is a predatory slogan meant to intimidate, terrorize and dehumanize Jews and Israelis. Similar to “Arbeit macht frei” which mocked the Nazi’s victims as they entered Auschwitz, there is no amount of reworking, reimagining, rewriting or redefining of a phrase whose purpose was the total dehumanization of millions of people that can render it acceptable in any kind of humane society.
It is unclear when the slogan emerged, but scholars claim it dates back to the 1960s as a call for a ‘secular, democratic, free Palestine’ among Palestinian activists and intellectuals who were displaced and made refugees by the 1948 war.
The slogan does not conjure “a specific political platform”; instead, it is a call for an “imagined future of peace and freedom".
The phrase in no way targets Jewish people, but is insular insofar it is related to the lived experiences of Palestinians who are denied basic rights and freedoms in their own homeland through the Israeli occupation. It critcises the actions of the Israeli state rather than a specific religious identity.
The phrase is a harmless and peaceful call for full recognition of rights of people of Palestine which historically was situated between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean sea. There is sufficient evidence by international human rights bodies that the state of Israel practices apartheid towards Palestinians, violating their basic human rights under international law. The discrimination with which they are treated is well-documented, and the occupation of their territories is also recognised under international law. Hence, the call for freedom from the river to the sea is a colloquial call for respecting the fundamental human rights of the Palestinian people that continue to be violated with increasing force. Thus, the phrase must be protected under international law including freedom of speech rights under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant for Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Vanning the phrase will be yet another example of discrimination against Palestinian people.
The ENTIRE phrase reads as follows “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” READ IT AGAIN IN TOTALITY. Nowhere does this comment intend or cause harm. Nowhere does the comment intend or cause violence. It’s simply is a phrase, parallel to the phrase Black Lives Matter, that calls for attention to the atrocities happening to a specific group of marginalized people. Banning this phrase is going against freedom of speech and quite actually does the opposite of making the app “safer”. Safer for who exactly?By banning this phrase you create an unsafe and violent space for minorities on the app. By banning this phrase you limit the freedom of speech of suffering minorities. It is discriminatory and dehumanizing towards ALL minorities to ban this phrase. For if “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is worth banning then why not “black lives matter” next? There is no true basis on which this phrase is harmful, violent, or discriminatory towards any group of people. It is simply a statement calling for liberation and if that is not allowed on this app than NO OTHER GROUP or cause should be allowed to call for their liberation or “self-defense” of their identity. See how limiting that sounds? It is not Meta’s responsibility to police a person’s thoughts and words on GENOCIDE or any other humanitarian causes so stop trying. Meanwhile, I’m faced with hundreds of inappropriate and gravely offensive sexual posts on Instagram that I report, usually to go unnoticed. Perhaps Meta should focus on true issues against their community guidelines that actually cause harm to their users daily rather than get involved with policing inspirational phrases resisting genocide.
Saying that people should be free is not hate speech. Any group of people, wherever they live, should be free. This does not promote the hatred or violence towards anyone. Rather, it promotes the freedom of all people. Any people who live between 2 bodies of water should be free.
The phrase “From the River to the Sea” is in no way antisemitic and should not be censored. It has been used by both Israelis and Palestinians and has a history of advocating for freedom. Listen to the people who are saying the phrase- they know more about why they are saying it than other people who are putting words in their mouths do.
Saying an a line from an old poem is antisemitic is doing injustice to both Jews and free speech.
"From the River to the Sea Palestine will be Free" is a statement calling for the freedom of Palestinians from living in an apartheid state, freedom from discrimination, violence, imprisonment, and land theft by the Israeli government or Zionist settlers. It's actually agnostic about the state of Israel's existence, because it calls for freedom and justice throughout the land of Israel and Palestine, not calling for a specific political or military path to that freedom. It is in no way anti-Semitic, even in cases where the speaker may also question the legitimacy of the state of Israel in other statements, because it is not anti-Semitic to call for freedom and justice and it is not anti-Semitic to criticize a government or hold a particular political viewpoint. To suggest that it is anti-Semitic or supporting terrorists to call for Palestinian freedom and justice dangerously conflates Arab Palestinian ethnicity with terrorism.
"From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free" is referring to equal rights for everyone between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, which has to be specified because Palestinians currently do not have equal rights in this area. I hear all these false claims that it's "genocidal" or "antisemitic," but it's nothing of the sort. First, because that's literally the entire quote, and nowhere in there does it call for genocide or even mention Jews. Secondly, Palestinians aren't free between the river and the sea, and they deserve to be, just like any people on this planet. Just like "black lives matter" doesn't mean that other lives don't matter, "from the river to the sea" doesn't call for anyone else to be oppressed, it only calls for freedom for a people who have been violently occupied for 76 years.
“From the River to the Sea – Palestine will be free” is a slogan that delegitimizes the world’s sole Jewish state and calls for its eradication. It has come to encapsulate an ideology that categorically denies the legitimacy of a sovereign Jewish presence in any part of what is today the State of Israel, the ancestral Jewish homeland. The phrase clearly refers to the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, an area that includes both the Palestinian Territories (West Bank and Gaza) and all of sovereign Israeli territory. Its proponents are for the most part those who overtly seek the destruction of any such independent Jewish entity, and to that end engage in and/or support unceasing acts of violence against it.
Underpinning this rejectionist ideology is a systematic falsification of Jewish history in the region, whereby in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Jews are positioned as being an alien, invasive presence with no connections to the land. Flagrant attempts to write the Jewish people out of history and deny them the heritage and narrative that has sustained them over more than three millennia cannot be anything other than antisemitic, in practice and for the most part in intent as well.
By falsely portraying Israeli Jews as an alien, invasive presence in the land, it becomes easier to justify carrying out acts of violence against them with a view to driving them out altogether. It thus amounts to calling for the ethnic cleansing, or worse, of Jews living there. The innumerable barbaric attacks against Jewish Israeli citizens ever since the founding of the state, with civilians being considered to be legitimate targets testifies to the potentially genocidal consequences were the global campaign to destroy the Jewish state ever to succeed.
In terms of this mindset, not only Jews in Israel but most Jews around the world are seen as legitimate targets for attack since in practice the great majority at some level support and identify with the Jewish state. The slogan thus serves to delegitimize a core part of the average Jewish person’s deeply held beliefs and sense of identity and justifies victimizing those who choose to affirm them.
South African Jewry have been experiencing increasing intimidation and threats to their Jewish identity which for the vast majority involves a connection to Israel (in the last University of Cape Town Study on SA Jewry 96% expressed a connection to Israel). In the past 7 months this has significantly heightened and included comments from highly placed politicians. At the ruling party, African National Congress rally on the Israeli Embassy, days after October 7, senior members of the ANC were chanting `From the River to the Sea’ on the same platforms that they were calling not just for the Israeli Embassy to be expelled, but for the democratically elected representative body of the SA Jewish community to also be kicked out of the country. The term `From the River to the Sea’ has become mainstreamed in South Africa, parallel to the many other types of attacks and threats on the Jewish community, including boycotts of Jewish Business. What is tagged on all of these antisemitic initiatives is this slogan. It has become the rallying cry of Jew hatred in South Africa.
We call for the Oversight Board to direct Meta to remove posts containing the phrase “from the river to the sea” from its platforms.
Wendy Kahn
National Director
SA Jewish Board of Deputies
Please see attached file
The phrase “FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA” refers to occupied land and the Palestinian struggle. Why does Meta censor those fighting for their rights, freedom, and independence, yet allow pro-Zionist speech? There should be a moratorium on anti-Semitic comments about Arabs, who are also Semitic peoples. Instead, we see hate speech against Palestinians, whose cause has been co-opted by a terrorist organization supported by Israel. #FreePalestine #EndHateSpeech #EqualRights