When It Comes to Slogans, Pro-Palestinian Activists Should Stick to Those Whose Meanings Aren’t Disputed
As someone who has appreciated the power of protest and activism on achieving progress in the U.S. and the world, it’s hard for me to watch the current high emotions over the Middle East devolve into arguments about the meanings of slogans.
Not only are those at loggerheads over Israel and Hamas taking the temperature to extreme levels, they won’t even agree on how to argue. Is, for example, “from the river to the sea” fair comment?
For those advocating for the Palestinian point of view, using phrases that the other side views as hateful is self-defeating and, frankly, hateful.
That’s why I appreciate the bold new effort by Cenk Uygur ( “pronounced Jenk, like short for Jenkins” and You-ger) — host of the popular left-wing YouTube political commentary show, “The Young Turks” — to eliminate that oft-voiced and problematic slogan: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
“Can everyone please stop the dumb ‘from the river to the sea’ chant?” Uygur posted on X, formerly Twitter. “It is incredibly hurtful to our Jewish brothers and sisters. It’s also incredibly counterproductive to protecting Palestinians. Do not chant something that the majority thinks is a call for genocide. Not complicated.”
I appreciate his call for clarity in sloganeering. I felt the same way when “Black Lives Matter” first appeared on the national scene during the great racial reckoning that followed George Floyd’s death. Passionate but leaderless movements often have too little control over their messaging. We all witnessed that when the political right took BLM’s name and attached their own cynical meanings to it.
The furor over “from the river to the sea” isn’t the same, but it’s leading similarly to needless disputes over meaning and intentions behind slogans.
The slogan is controversial enough to have led to the censure last month of Michigan Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American member of Congress.
Tlaib, like other Palestinians I know, claims a very different understanding of the phrase going back to the time when the territory historically called Palestine stretched between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea under British rule from 1920 to 1948.
When Israel was established, the Palestinian territory was divided. Now the West Bank lies on the Jordan River, the Gaza Strip is on the Mediterranean coast and Israel lies between them.
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