“From River To Sea” - Antisemitism or Tone Deafness?

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At the beginning of the war “From River to Sea” was uniformly understood in mainstream America as a call to slaughter every Israeli. Nowadays this remains true for mainstream Jewish organizations and zionists. Elsewhere it is understood to mean the replacement of Israel as a Jewish centric state with multiethnic democracy with human rights for all, or a phrase that has multiple meanings.

A few days ago a truck drove by Columbia University and in lights claimed the IDF is harvesting Palestinian bodies. Pro zionist media made a big deal out of this. Actually, such obvious antisemitism is not as prevalent as it was at the beginning of the war for several reasons. One is the partially successful rebranding of the phrase noted above. Another is the cancelation of people who use the phrase, another reason is the emergence public Jewish anti-zionism. Like most people antisemites understand that “a friend of my enemy is my friend” and thus claim they believe in a democratic multiethnic Palestine. These make it nearly impossible to determine how much anti Zionism is antisemitism.

This post is about people who use “From River to Sea” and related phrases such as “Globalize the Intifada” for nonmalevolent reasons. In the last 10 or 15 years society has become a lot less tolerant of wording that groups that have been discriminated against find problematic. That these words were not meant individually as slurs or have varied meanings does not matter anymore. The priority is that the discriminated group for current and historical reasons find them a slur. If you are not a member of the said group you have no right to use or have a different interpretation of those words because as not a member of the group you can’t really understand, and you most certainly do not get to determine what is racist, homophobic, etc.

It should seem pretty obvious as to why “From River to Sea” would be triggering to use current parlance for Jews. In certain circles “Microaggressions” can result in consequences. There is nothing micro about diaspora history, especially if you like many Jews lost multiple family members during the holocaust. But yet all complaining have been utterly ignored by the chanters. In a lot more places Jews are not determining what antisemitism is.

Back to the question in the title. Since this this post is about people who do not think all Jews have innate negative traits it is tone deafness and tone deafness at a pretty high level at that.

I think it's antisemitism. It seems that the world hasn't learned anything from the Holocaust. Why can't we go back to the 60s? There was much more love back in those days.

Neither. It's just reflective of a lot of people not being willing to let supporters of genocide dictate the language they use.

The bulk of the people who get offended over it seem perfectly fine with Israel's actions, so they're in no position morally-speaking to criticize the slogans used by their opponents.

If someone isn't willing to condemn Israel's campaign of terror aimed at civilians why would I be concerned with how they feel about a slogan? They've already conceded the moral high ground.

This thread is not about Netanyahu, Ben Gvir supporters. There are many progressive Jews whom who are all in with BLM, trans rights, inclusive language, etc. who feel those slogans are threatening. Not to care about people who have been your political allies is tone deaf.

Last edited by ASPartOfMe on 09 Feb 2024, 1:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I would compare it to any other instance where people feel disempowered overall but have found a way to make their opponents seethe.

It might not make for good politics, but it's not motivated by good politics, it's motivated by frustration. It's not tone deafness though because the offence is at least partially intentional.

I don’t disagree.

I rather be opining here than be the people with responsibility of making political strategy in this environment. It’s a hellish minefield where often every choice is a losing one.

Last edited by ASPartOfMe on 09 Feb 2024, 1:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I believe that, in addition, the Democrats and other centrist parties don't do well when subjected to leftist purity politics because let's face it, even leftists rarely pass every test and in-fighting the main pastime of the left.

The “leftists” not passing a purity test is what this thread is about. If I thought of that wording I could have saved myself a lot of tapping.

There is no war in Gaza, I think the word you meant to use here is "genocide". Here, let me spell it out for you; G. E. N. O. C. I. D. E. Gen-o-cide. Genocide.

And no, "from the river to the sea" has never meant any such thing; to Hell with what is "uniformly understood." The Israeli-aligned Evangelical mainstream media is finally losing control of the narrative, and I love to see it.

Probably more ethnic cleansing than genocide.

And it can be both a war and ethnic cleansing/genocide at same time. Hamas does have a military part of them. Divisions, units, etc.

IMHO the difference between the Israelis and Hamas is not intent but ability to carry out their wishes.

As for as far slaughtering all Jews that is in Hamas’s charter. Did they not mean it?

One man's hate crime is another's "people's revolution".

I am constantly reminded that most separatist movements around the world don't garner anywhere near the same sympathy or support as the Palestinian movement. If you go to any muslim majority country it's almost a sacred duty to support the re-occupation of Palestine (i.e. river to the sea).

I'm sorry but no college student should get into bed with authoritarian regimes by spouting "River to the sea" knowing full well what it means which is the destruction of Israel. Anyone left in doubt what would happen to israeli citizens in the event HAMAS took over Israel only need watch videos of Oct 7, Apologising for HAMAS i.e. they don't really represent the average Palestinian would be a less persuasive argument.

No, they're forcibly relocating and killing members of an ethnic group. That's genocide any way you slice it.


Nope. Wrong. False. The opposite of true. Fake news. They removed the anti-jew stuff in 2017, so you're working with outdated information.

On 10/7 they seemed to be working off the old charter.

Before 10/7 I had some sympathy for Palestinians but all 10-7 showed is that they endorsed a party that uses barbaric violence to solve issues of territory.

Actually, I’ve seen you make pathetic excuses for Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians long before October 7th 2023. It’s all very strange behaviour for a supposed left-liberal who gets upset every time he hears about some “Karen” in the US who dares to look at a black person the wrong way.

As for what you have posted on this thread, I have nothing but contempt for it.

1. Like virtually all Israel-apologists lately you want to focus on one single attack on one day by Hamas while ignoring the decades of violent oppression by Israel against the Palestinians that led up and the genocide that Israel has been carrying out ever since
2. You neglect to mention that much of what we were initially told to believe about October 7th was a pack of lies (there were no beheaded babies, and large numbers of dead Israelis were actually killed by the IDF thanks to their Hannibal Directive). What we’re left with is a violent hostage-taking attack by Hamas, but nothing compared to what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians before and since.
3. International law (and common sense) views the use of force by an occupied people resisting occupation as more legitimate than the use of force by the occupier – yet somehow you do not (at least not in the case of the Palestinians).
4. You want to tar all “Palestinians” for the actions of one group (Hamas), when not all Palestinians support Hamas, and when huge numbers of Gazans weren’t even alive when Hamas last won an election, and when there are also large numbers of Palestinians in the West Bank where Hamas don’t even hold power. Yet when it comes to the genocidal actions of Israel, the most criticism you will ever put forward is for “one or two bad apples in the Knesset” (according to your words in another thread).
5. You ignore the fact that Israel has propped up Hamas for years as an excuse to refuse to negotiate on allowing a Palestinian state.
6. On another thread you said you understood why a black person in South Africa would want to kill whites, and that’s nearly 30 years after apartheid ended, and yet you cannot see why some Palestinians might want to use force to oppose what is being done to them right now

Last edited by Cornflake on 10 Feb 2024, 8:40 am, edited 1 time in total.: De-fanged a personal attack

^ I don’t think that someone could be aware of what’s happening in Palestine and yet lack sympathy to such an extent without a fair amount of prejudice going on. It demonstrates that people can be against prejudice towards certain groups of people and not others. I find it fascinating the way some justify their prejudice by claiming that the behavior of a subset of the population says something about the demographic as a whole - a demographic which contains millions of people.

No matter which group is the target, those who have prejudice always try to justify it in one way or another. It’s blatantly obvious behavior that’s been thoroughly studied by sociologists. People in the US who have racist attitudes toward black people often cite the high incarceration rate of black men while completely disregarding systemic racism in various facets of society, including the justice system, which leads to it. It appears that something similar happens with those who espouse prejudice towards Palestinians. They completely disregard decades worth of oppression and claim that the behavior of a few says something about the group as a whole. When evidence has been provided over and over again - demonstrating appalling oppression, the fact that not everyone was or is pro-Hamas in Palestine, and the situation with elections, it makes little to no impact. It’s really difficult to reason with folks who have prejudice as the past few months have illustrated. They often fall back on the same arguments and use emotion-based reasoning to “prove” why their views are a-okay. Fortunately, given how transparent it is, most people don’t buy it.