Israel-Hamas War 2023

[Josquius]

Maybe basic geography needs to be explained for "from the river to the sea", sure, but it's not a very elaborate concept otherwise. And again, best defense the chanters have is ignorance and stupidity, which is never a good look.

The basic geography is well understood. The Jordan River and Med are standout natural borders for the region of Palestine.
The issue is some are reading a unwritten "The only freedom is national border expansion. All inclusive. Destroy the Jews" whilst others see nothing of the sort and recognise one people's freedom doesn't have to come at the expense of another.

Here's a map to support your "natural borders of Palestine" thing:


You can surely note from the Jordan river to the sea that's largely called Israel, not Palestine. So saying that within those boundaries "Palestine" will be "free" clearly implies that Israel is what keeping Palestine un-free.

And the reason for all these explanations isn't that without these explanations the chant seems innocent. It is the exact opposite. The chant is clearly and openly malicious, it is attempts like yours to hand-wave that obvious undertone away what makes it necessary to highlight the obvious facts around it. The dishonesty is entirely on the "pro-chant" side on this one.

Funny, a part I was thinking of adding to my reply but eventually didn't: its curious how these really literalist people get so hung up on how you also have Israel between the river and the sea... but they don't really care that the river only covers a part of Palestine, even just looking at the West Bank it doesn't cover the whole lot (unless you want to get all hydrological with the Dead Sea).


As I've covered this is a problem with the two meanings of Palestine. There's the sate of Palestine, then there's the historic region of Palestine. The region has a long history of being named Palestine long before Israel was established there.
Maybe we need to find a third neutral name? Its kind of like the term 'British Isles' and Irish people sometimes seeing this as implying ownership

And yes. Israel is largely what is keeping Palestine unfree. That is absolutely correct. Even where shitty governments in the Palestinian State are involved its very arguable they're only really doing their thing in response to Israel.
But does that mean the only logical responses are keep everything exactly as it is or absolutely destroy Israel and grind it into dust? There's also the (rather difficult considering its politics) option of Israel being less of a cunty nation to consider.

I'd say you're the one hand waving here. This dishonesty is just insane.

[Tamas]

Since you seem very much for accepting nuanced explanations for sentences by the people who say them, I am wondering about your take on this Tory donor's sense of humour which many highlight as blatantly racist but he is adamant it is not how those comments were meant:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/mar/12/tory-donor-frank-hester-no-room-for-the-indians

[Josquius]

Since you seem very much for accepting nuanced explanations for sentences by the people who say them, I am wondering about your take on this Tory donor's sense of humour which many highlight as blatantly racist but he is adamant it is not how those comments were meant:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/mar/12/tory-donor-frank-hester-no-room-for-the-indians

You're the one adopting the explained side here. I'm the one taking it at face value.

That Tory bloke specifically said Abbot should be shot and she makes him hate all black women. That's pretty targeted and fucked up.

This is fairly going round in circles. So a summary.


*"From the river to the sea Palestine is Jewish" began as a Zionist expression dating back to before Israel was established.

*"From the river to the sea Palestine is Arab/Islamic" became used by Palestinian extremists of differing stripes in the 60s, which aligned with more mainstream Palestinian wishes of the time to see all their lands retaken.

*In the 70s it was used again by extremist Israelis to say "between the sea and the Jordan there will be only Israeli sovereignty"

*In the 2000s "From the river to the sea Palestine will be free" began to be used by the pro-Palestinian movement. It had a nice rhyme to it and worked well as a slogan that avoided pinning itself to any actual policy and was merely a general purpose chant for justice.

*In the current wave of protests, much much bigger than usual, in response to big shit going down it has really taken off in usage and gotten mainstream coverage.

*Actual interviews with random people at the protests and articles written from folk involved have said... no. They mean exactly what they say. There's no hidden meaning. They want Palestine to be free. They want Israelis and Palestinians to be at peace and for the oppression of Palestinians to stop.

*Some Jewish groups have responded saying its evil and anti-semitic and it means they want to kill all Israelis. This is quite a messy situation with there being lots of good faith reactions of fear here, but also a hell of a lot of fires being fuelled by those who to maintain want a "Israel good, Palestine bad" image, and it all links into each other furthering the fear.

*The right have really latched onto this and are spreading the message amongst the population as a whole that anyone who defends Palestine is evil and a threat.

*Its use has sharply tapered off amongst many protesters who despite their obvious intended meaning, accept at face value that its vagueness might be giving the wrong idea, draw correlation with similarly worded but completely differently intended earlier uses, upsetting innocent people, and providing ammo to those supporting the oppression they oppose.


Which brings us back to the entire reason this topic came up again- no, pro-Palestine protests are not filled with chants for a one state solution that eliminates Israel.

[The Minsky Moment]

Jos you seem to be reading the evidence in a peculiar way. The link you gave before traced the origin of the slogan with that wording to anti-Oslo Palestinian demonstrators.  I.e. people who advocate a one-state solution that eliminates Israel.  The slogan isn't really capable of carrying another meaning.  Hypothetically if Israel were to withdraw to pre-67 borders and a new Palestinian state created in the remainder, then the slogan would not be fulfilled. Palestinians might enjoy freedom from the river to the sea, but *Palestine* would not.

[grumbler]

Jos you seem to be reading the evidence in a peculiar way. The link you gave before traced the origin of the slogan with that wording to anti-Oslo Palestinian demonstrators.  I.e. people who advocate a one-state solution that eliminates Israel.  The slogan isn't really capable of carrying another meaning.  Hypothetically if Israel were to withdraw to pre-67 borders and a new Palestinian state created in the remainder, then the slogan would not be fulfilled. Palestinians might enjoy freedom from the river to the sea, but *Palestine* would not.

Note that Josq has invented a new history for the slogan in which the Jews originated it. 

[Josquius]

Stop making stuff up.

Jos you seem to be reading the evidence in a peculiar way. The link you gave before traced the origin of the slogan with that wording to anti-Oslo Palestinian demonstrators.  I.e. people who advocate a one-state solution that eliminates Israel.  The slogan isn't really capable of carrying another meaning.  Hypothetically if Israel were to withdraw to pre-67 borders and a new Palestinian state created in the remainder, then the slogan would not be fulfilled. Palestinians might enjoy freedom from the river to the sea, but *Palestine* would not.

It has some origin in that period where some did indeed want that whilst for others it was mere upset at surrendering claims completely with nothing in return for Palestinians.
And even amongst one state supporters seeing Israel 'eliminated' is quite loaded language- as said an ideal dream world (impractical) situation would be a single united Palestine, eliminating the current Israel and State of Palestine, where both groups live in peace.

If everyone in a region has freedom then that region is free in my book.
Again an issue of the same word having multiple meanings- some of the more ridiculous Scottish independence pushers go on about a "Free Scotland" despite Scotland being perfectly free as part of the UK.

[Razgovory]

The slogan isn't "Palestinians will be free"  It is "Palestine will be free".  They don't want freedom in the western sense anymore than the Afghanis who supported the Taliban wanted freedom.  It is a nationalist call.

[viper37]

Jos you seem to be reading the evidence in a peculiar way. The link you gave before traced the origin of the slogan with that wording to anti-Oslo Palestinian demonstrators.  I.e. people who advocate a one-state solution that eliminates Israel.  The slogan isn't really capable of carrying another meaning.  Hypothetically if Israel were to withdraw to pre-67 borders and a new Palestinian state created in the remainder, then the slogan would not be fulfilled. Palestinians might enjoy freedom from the river to the sea, but *Palestine* would not.

Note that Josq has invented a new history for the slogan in which the Jews originated it. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_the_river_to_the_sea

The precise origins of the phrase are disputed.^[18] According to American historian Robin D. G. Kelley, the phrase "began as a Zionist slogan signifying the boundaries of Eretz Israel."^[3] Israeli-American historian Omer Bartov notes that Zionist usage of such language predates the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 and began with the Revisionist movement of Zionism led by Vladimir Jabotinski, which spoke of establishing a Jewish state in all of Palestine and had a song which includes: "The Jordan has two banks; this one is ours, and the other one too," suggesting a Jewish state extending even beyond the Jordan River.^[19]
Kelley writes that the phrase was adopted by the Palestine Liberation Organization in the mid-1960s; the 1964 charter of the PLO's Palestinian National Council called for "the recovery of the usurped homeland in its entirety". The 1964 charter stated that "Jews who are of Palestinian origin shall be considered Palestinians if they are willing to live peacefully and loyally in Palestine", specifically defining "Palestinian" as those who had "normally resided in Palestine until 1947".^[20] In the 1968 revision, the charter was further revised, stating that "Jews who had resided normally in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionist invasion" would be considered Palestinian.^[20][6]
In 1977, the concept appeared in an election manifesto of the Israeli political party Likud, which stated that "between the sea and the Jordan there will be only Israeli sovereignty."^[21][22]
For Elliott Colla, "it is unclear when and where the slogan "from the river to the sea," first emerged within Palestinian protest culture."^[17] In November 2023, Colla wrote that he had not encountered the phrase – in either Standard nor Levantine Arabic – in Palestinian revolutionary media of the 1960s and 1970s and noted that "the phrase appears nowhere in the Palestinian National Charters of 1964 or 1968, nor in the Hamas Charter of 1988."^[17]
In 1979, the phrase was invoked by delegates attending the Palestine Congress of North America.^[23]
Colla notes that activists of the First Intifada (1987-1993) "remember hearing variations of the phrase in Arabic from the late 1980s onwards" and that the phrases have been documented in graffiti from the period in works such as Saleh Abd al-Jawad's "Faṣā'il al-ḥaraka al-waṭaniyya al-Filasṭīniyya fi-l-arāḍī al-muḥtalla wa-shu'ārāt al-judrān" (1991)^[24] and Julie Peteet's "The Writing on the Walls: The Graffiti of the Intifada" (1996).^[25][17]
The phrase appeared in a 2021 B'Tselem report entitled "A Regime of Jewish Supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This Is Apartheid" that described Israel's de facto rule over the territory from the river to the sea, through its occupation of the West Bank and blockade of the Gaza Strip, as a regime of apartheid.^[26][27] 

Who's inventing what?

[viper37]

The slogan isn't "Palestinians will be free"  It is "Palestine will be free".  They don't want freedom in the western sense anymore than the Afghanis who supported the Taliban wanted freedom.  It is a nationalist call.

Again with the racism.

You love religious fanatics of all kinds, hate secularism, but then you complain if these fanatics take over a movement and start killing people.  It's as if you're some kind of leftist who rejoice when things turn to shit.

[crazy canuck]

The slogan isn't "Palestinians will be free"  It is "Palestine will be free".  They don't want freedom in the western sense anymore than the Afghanis who supported the Taliban wanted freedom.  It is a nationalist call.

I'm impressed you have an understanding of what every single Palestinian, and every single Palestinian supporter believes. It must've taken years of research for you to come to that kind of understanding.

Of course I jest, this thread is devolving into hyperbole.

[grumbler]

(snip of bogus Wiki article)

Who's inventing what?

Whatever person wrote that wiki article (maybe Josq) is inventing that history.  The referenced article for the claim isn't written by D. G. Kelley and doesn't even mention Kelly. 

Don't use Wiki as an authoritative source. Use Wiki only to find the actual source (which, AFAICT, does not exist for this claim).

[Razgovory]

The slogan isn't "Palestinians will be free"  It is "Palestine will be free".  They don't want freedom in the western sense anymore than the Afghanis who supported the Taliban wanted freedom.  It is a nationalist call.

Again with the racism.

You love religious fanatics of all kinds, hate secularism, but then you complain if these fanatics take over a movement and start killing people.  It's as if you're some kind of leftist who rejoice when things turn to shit.

What the fuck are you talking about?

[Razgovory]

The slogan isn't "Palestinians will be free"  It is "Palestine will be free".  They don't want freedom in the western sense anymore than the Afghanis who supported the Taliban wanted freedom.  It is a nationalist call.

I'm impressed you have an understanding of what every single Palestinian, and every single Palestinian supporter believes. It must've taken years of research for you to come to that kind of understanding.

Of course I jest, this thread is devolving into hyperbole.

So are you holding out hope that there is some hidden faction of Palestinians who want a liberal democracy of peace and tolerance that has overwhelming support?  Face it, the majority would go with a Hamas or Hamas-style dictatorship if given a chance.  That's the political culture there.  Democracy is pretty scarce on the ground in that part of the world.

[Razgovory]

(snip of bogus Wiki article)

Who's inventing what?

Whatever person wrote that wiki article (maybe Josq) is inventing that history.  The referenced article for the claim isn't written by D. G. Kelley and doesn't even mention Kelly. 

Don't use Wiki as an authoritative source. Use Wiki only to find the actual source (which, AFAICT, does not exist for this claim).

Hot Tip:  Wiki typically sources it's claims, just click on the little number behind the statement and use that as a source.  It works surprisingly well!  Unless the source doesn't say what Wiki says it does...

[grumbler]

Public opinion polls have historically consistently shown that a majority of Palestinians prefer a two-state solution with a liberal democratic Palestine.  You won't find that majority today, because their women and children are being murdered.  Similarly, public opinion polls have historically consistently shown that a majority of Israelis prefer a two-state solution with a liberal democratic Palestine.  You won't find that majority today, because their women and children were murdered.

The latest PO poll I saw with Palestinians saw the majority favoring no solution at all, having given up hope of any solution whatsoever.