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
This slogan is hate speech and a call to violence. It needs to be banned
This phrase is inciting hate and furthering violence against Jews across the US and internationally. It is not a peaceful statement and is threatening to the lives of Israelis and Jews around the world. Please consider it hate speech/violent.
From the river to the sea erases Jews and the Jewish people and represents a call to wipe Israel off the map. It is a genocidal slogan. Do not allow it to be accepted as a call for peace or coexistence. It isn’t.
It is forbidden to make statements that aim at the destruction of the State of Israel or any other country. The sentence "from the river to the sea" is said as a sentence that seeks to erase the State of Israel. And this is a particularly terrible sentence after what the Jewish people went through in the Holocaust in order for the Jewish people to have a home.
“From the river to the sea” is a genocidal phrase. Even the United States government has officially deemed it so. Please do not allow genocidal rhetoric on your platform. This is so basic. Hate speech is not protected.
From the river to the sea is antisemetic. The only thing from the Jordan river to the med sea is Israel. This is Hamas’ cry and Hamas is a terrorist organization. Allowing posts with this language supports normalization of the hatred and vitriol that Hamas - a terrorist org - has against all Jews.
"“FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA” is a covert call to destroy Israel and replace it entirely with Palestine. Hamas will find it necessary to expel or kill another six million Jews to achieve this. Therefore it is hate-speech.
The slogan, "from the river to the sea," as shouted by Palestinians who hate Israel, is well known. It has no other meaning than "Palestinians will rule from the Jordan River to the sea," which means no place for Jews in the same area. "No place" means their eradication. Where can Jews go? For Palestinians, especially Hamas, that means the extinction of the Jews.
The problem is that most of the protesters didn't understand the real meaning of such a slogan but contribute to delivering it around the globe.
Simply put, “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” suggests that Israel has no right to exist. It’s in line with the sentiment promulgated by Iran and its terrorist proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, attempting to wipe out all Jewish people from the state of Israel - and everywhere.
Legitimizing that position has increased antisemitism significantly - as we are experiencing a historic rise in antisemitism not seen since the Holocaust. Part of the reason for that is that those who believe that “Palestine should be free from the river to the sea” also terrorize/harass/assault those who are supportive of the State of Israel, namely Jewish people - who only have one country to call home and that is their ancestral homeland, Israel.
Legitimizing a terrorist position is dangerous and only fuels the hateful flames ignited by the anti-Israel, antisemitic, pro Hamas protestors.
This is a clear call for genocide and deportations of Jews from Israel, associated with the Arab states call to push the Jews to the sea (coming from the eastern border of Israel). My Arab university friends used to joke how it become mainstream since most don’t even know what it means and it sounded innocent.
The sentence is calling for the destruction of Israel. It is already been defined as hate speech as it pertains to genocide. We will never let that happen anyway so there’s no point for this sentence to exist in the first place.
The state of Israel resides in the area that is described from the river of Jordan to the Mediterranean sea.
Claiming for the establishment of a Palestinian state on the entire area from the river to the sea, means complete elimination of the state of Israel.
It is fundamentaly different from a call such as Free Palestine, which can have the meaning of a Palestinian state residing in some parts of the area alongside sn Israeli state that also resides in some parts of the area.
Therefore, the call From the River to the Sea, is a racist and a violent call for the elimination of a country and the death of 9 millions citizens living in it.
Media blackouts are a tactic of genocide. I do not support the removal of pro-Palestinian content. Such content saves innocent and precious and vulnerable lives from the ongoing Israeli occupation and genocide of Palestine and the Palestinians who are the only indigenous to their homeland. Palestine MUST be free!!!
Some people, including people who chant the phrase “From the river to the sea Palestine will be free”,don’t understand that they are calling for the annihilation of the state of Israel. Some people do understand what it means and still state it proudly. Some defend their call by saying, we want it to be a secular state. Well, that’s a lame excuse and doesn’t match the desires of the Palestinian people themselves.
Any way you cut it, the phrase “From the river to the sea…” means an end to the only Jewish majority state, the only place in the world, where Jewish people can be protected from persecution.
Please add it to your list of hate speech and take down any post or comment using the phrase.
To claim that there need more contact for the phrase "from the river to the sea" is doing the same what the universities tried to say when covering the hate and Antisemitism behind the "context depending" and "free speech". There are too many posts that are calling for Jewish genocide, this is just one example. By allowing this kind of content you are complicit with spreading the hate and call for genocide!
In Arabic the full slogan reads "From water to water, Palestine will be Arab" or "من المية للمية فلسطين عربية" romanized as "min el-maiyeh lel mayieh, Falastin arabieh", the waters being the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River. This is a clear call for Jewish genocide.
Even the phrase in question as it is chanted in English: "From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free" implies a one state solution, after October 7 we see that peaceful coexistence is not the aim of Hamas or those who celebrated Hamas' brutal atrocities on civilians asleep in their beds. We have heard Hamas again and again celebrate the slaughter of civilians in Israel, including children and elderly, in the most gruesome ways imaginable. To call for one state reaching across what is the entire land of present day Israel implies the Jews, Muslims, Bedouins, Christians, Baha'i and other groups living there currently would be forcibly displaced or worse.
Calling for a Palestinian state is justified and not the problem here. The problem is that, just as Persian Jews would never be allowed to go back to Iran and take over the towns and home that their grandparents were expelled from, Palestinians cannot displace Israelis in their fight for sovereignty. Both groups must find a way to live side by side, and that certainly won't be the case under Hamas rule.
As for the slogan, it is a call for Jewish slaughter plain and simple. It is used that way in protests and online.
Please recognize “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” as hate speech. It refers to the land between the Jordan river and Mediterranean Sea which is the country of Israel. It’s a call to kill those in Israel and take the land. This should not be allowed.
From the river to the sea basically calls for the elimination of Israel which is located between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean Sea and giving it to the Palestinians. The state of Israel is a tiny state and the only one that is meant for the Jewish people.
It was given to the Jewish people formally in 1948 but the Jewish people lived here since the days of the bible.
Arabs are living in Israel as equal rights civilians. I invite you to think what would happen to the Jewish people under a Palestinian country.
We are not against a Palestinian country but it definitely cannot be legitimate to call for it to exist from the river to the sea instead of the state of Israel. That is pure antisemitism and aligns with the terror organization which is Hamas.
Thank you Meta for not allowing ignorant extremests to win this war on social media.