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What are your thoughts on chanting "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free"? Is it too provocative or aggressive?

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  • Pretty one-sided replies so far so let me just be Devil's Advocate / explain where I'm coming from.

    I want to chant things that mean: "Free Palestine", "Stop the violence", "Freedom and Equality for all"

    I don't want to chant things that mean: "Kill the Jews"

    Do I want to chant "Abolish Israel"... well maybe, I mean it depends on what you replace it with.

    "Palestine one and free from the river to the sea" sounds like it is a call for a single arab state and the elimination of Israel, which is bordering on chauvinism.

    Or at least that's the other side of it I was interested in discussing.

    • The entirety of Israel exists on land stolen from the indigenous inhabitants of the region. This claim on land is enforced through extreme violence and disenfranchisement of said indigenous population, to the point of genocide. "From the river to the sea" means every last bit of stolen land must be restored to its rightful owners, and the illegitimate fascist apartheid state of Israel can only continue to exist by denying that restitution. The creation of a Palestinian state that respects the rights of all ethnicities and religious groups within its borders is the only acceptable solution, and the assertion that any Jews left in the region if Israel doesn't exist being hunted down and slaughtered is rooted in ahistorical, xenophobic attitudes. The Muslim world has a significantly better track record in how it's treated its Jewish minority than Europe or America ever did.

      It's not a compromise. It's not a demand for genocide. It's a demand for justice. You don't chant "stop murdering like half of us maybe," that's fucking ridiculous.

    • There is no formulation that will be acceptable to them. You are wasting your time

    • Okay you seem genuine, so I'll bite. Actual antisemites don't try to hide their views. In 2015 CHUDs in Charlottesville took to the streets chanting "the Jews will not replace us." They made it very clear.

      "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" is self explanatory as well. Palestinians cannot be free so long as the state of Israel exists. That doesn't mean executing all Jews, it means ending the apartheid state that's been commiting genocide and stealing land for 70+ years. I don't have it in me to explain the whole conflict for you, but if you look at 1948, 1967, and even the 2000 Camp David accords you'll see that any sort of "compromise" with Israel leads to Palestinians losing their land and their lives.

      • the Jews will not replace us.

        And this was one of the more appropriate (?) chants I heard. I don't know how to properly spoiler/cw so I won't post some of the other things they said, but full on nazi shit.

    • To be fair, I’d say your replies are one-sided because you’re posting in a place where the majority are not too sympathetic to Israel’s existence

      • States are bad, and explicitly genocidal settler colonial states are double-plus-bad.

        • Counterpoint: States are the only way to ensure the dictatorship of the proletariat until communism can be achieved.

          • No argument there. Nation-states are the only technology thus far that can effectively fight nation-states. Until we find something better, states are what we've got to work with. But the ultimate goal is to do away with them entirely.

    • Good thing "From the river to the sea" doesn't mean anything close to a call to commit genocide against Jewish people. It's a call to liberate the land from a fascist theocratic settler-colonial ethnostate. As for what to replace it with, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine put forth a plan for a secular socialist government that would guarantee rights and freedom of religion to all.

      Isn'treal apologists like to pretend "from the river to the sea" is a call for genocide because then they can pretend that people fighting for their liberation as Nazis. But it's just not true.

    • i think a good chant makes an implicit argument that shifts the conversation. Israel has made it clear for its entire history that it is incompatible with Palestinian dignity and freedom. This is not widely understood by Americans, who think peacetime is just and neutral, and that the conflict began either 1000 years ago over whose god is better, or last week when the New York Times said Hamas murdered thousands of innocents for no discernible reason.

      "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" makes the argument that all the land between those bounds is occupied territory, and that the occupation will fall. Given a belief in the narrative of a holy racewar, it is easily misinterpreted as exterminationist. A quick conversation can solve this: "why are you calling for the extermination of Jews?" "I'm not. That's not what that means. Why do you equate freedom with extermination?" Then you continue marching, because you are not interested in fighting the racewar. That's the terrain of the zionists.

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