Charlotte Church on the 'From the river to the sea'. Lots of stuff I agree with but we're back at interpretation, and the use of it by Hamas isn't dealt with.
https://charlotte-church.ghost.io/
Intelligent and well-written piece by Charlotte Church.
I think even Hamas use of the phrase “from the river to the sea” has varied interpretations too. It’s in their 2017 revised Charter where they also recognise the pre-1967 borders for a Palestinian state. This is in line with the PLO use of the phrase, long before Hamas came into existence.
Despite attempts by critics and the Zionist lobby to twist the narrative and portray its use as antisemitism in order to silence criticism of Zionism, its interpretation presumably depends on who is using the phrase and if the person is armed and acting aggressively then it could be seen as threatening - see NY Times article extract below:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/09/us/politics/river-to-the-sea-israel-gaza-palestinians.htmlThe slogan does not appear in Hamas’s founding covenant from 1988, which pledges “to confront the Zionist invasion and defeat it,” not just in historic Palestinian territory, but worldwide. It is featured, however, in a section of the group’s revised platform from 2017. In the same paragraph, Hamas indicates it could accept a Palestinian state along the borders that were in place before the 1967 war — the same borders considered under the Oslo Accords.
Still, Hamas’s firm commitment not to recognize Israel under any conditions has solidified the impression to critics that whoever repeats the slogan is participating in a rallying cry for the destruction of Israel — and by extension, of the Jewish people as well.
“The phrase ‘Palestine will be free from the river to the sea’ suggests a vision of the future without a Jewish state, but it does not answer the question of what the role of Jews would be,” said Peter Beinart, a professor at the City University of New York. He added that the meaning of the phrase, however, “depends on the context.”
“If it’s coming from an armed Hamas member, then yes, I would feel threatened,” said Professor Beinart, who is Jewish. “If it is coming from someone who I know has a vision of equality and mutual liberation, then no, I would not feel threatened.”
Many Palestinians have been dismayed over the outrage about the slogan, which they regard as the result of an orchestrated effort by groups like the A.D.L. to impugn the motives of Palestinians as a means of undermining their cause of statehood and silencing them.
“It is perfectly possible for both people to be free between the river and the sea,” Ahmad Khalidi, a researcher at Oxford University who worked on Arab-Israeli peace negotiations during the 1990s, said of Palestinians and Jews. “Is ‘free’ necessarily in itself genocidal? I think any reasonable person would say no. Does it preclude the fact that the Jewish population in the area between the sea and the river cannot also be free? I think any reasonable person would also say no.”
