As many know, there is a huge, perhaps even overwhelming, controversy over the phrase “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Proponents of it say that it is a message of peace, expressing a wish for the lifting of oppression of Palestinians in their native land; opponents say that the phrase is a threat, one that implies the destruction not only of the state of Israel but also all of the Jewish people in it.
All good points! It seems that no one can claim total ownership of the phrase (no surprise). Can such a contentious history of the phrase be set aside long enough to rehabilitate it into something universally positive? Until then cannot people use it for their own purpose as they describe it and be respected when the purpose is peaceful and honorable?
I stand very firmly on my position: I don't know. I have to give up on it. My background is in data analysis and design and so that last paragraph really resonates. (On Meerloo I caught this in Wiki: "He was the youngest of six children and the only one to escape his occupied country and survive the Holocaust.")
Context is so hugely critical to having any functional language at all. Even with the mundane: I had a job long ago in which three departments of a railroad could not reconcile their monthly records of the train crews. Operations, HR and accounting. Consider a train with 4 employees: 2 engineers, 1 brakeman, 1 fireman. To one department that was one crew, another 3 crews and the last 4 crews.
Hmm. I've been wondering what would be the best way to respond to your comment, and upon rereading I'm struck by your idea of rehabilitation. It's striking because it reminds me of some of the material I was reading about the reclamation of slurs (which is funny, as we were speaking about slurs in an outside discussion).
Even among linguists and philologists, it's up in the air as to whether slurs can ever truly be reclaimed or rescued from their function as asserting a derogatory status upon its target. But we see marginalized communities try to do just that. This is especially true in the LGBTQ+ communities, notably with the retrofitting of 'queer', turning the term, if not entirely positive, then decidedly neutral, from a connotation that had been emphatically negative. So I think there's something to be said about the possibility of taking away or fundamentally changing the semantic / semiotic core of a word or phrase.
Slogans are their own animal. They're almost impossible to craft intentionally and, once one accumulates or is endowed with power, they're almost impossible to stamp out. I came across a fascinating article from just about a century ago, by an esteemed sociologist named Muzafer Sherif. He details different aspects of slogans and relates them partially to functions in propaganda (which is why I was reading the piece in the first place).
As for Meerloo, I did not know that about his background, but I know he was keenly focused on the particularities and intricacies of totalitarianism. He's also written about language, though I haven't yet invested the time -- I should give his work a hearing. It's _Conversation and Communication_ (1953).
This is very clear and helpful. Great essay! What I notice going on with this phrase is that so many Zionists live in fear. A democracy with equal rights for all seems like a threat to them because they truly believe they will always be oppressed if they don’t dominate. It’s tragic—and still more tragic because the oppression of the 20th century was real and should never be minimized.
But it’s just not true that all of us non-Jews hate Jews and wish to oppress them. It’s not true that every non-Jew is automatically an antisemite. I don’t know what we can do to combat this pervasive fear.
By the by, Yousef Munayyer was featured on Jadaliyya a few months back, and he spoke about democracy as an idea that brings terror to those looking to maintain a demographic majority in Israel:
~ 51:23: “So when we are hearing these things being characterized as annihilationist or genocidal, it’s important to understand what is meant by that. The idea of equality is considered an existential threat. We’re not talking about violence, right? We’re talking about equality before the law. Even equality before the law is considered an existential threat to the Israeli state.
“So when these things are called annihilationist, it is an effort to distract from what they are really calling for, because the idea that equality is an existential threat is nonsense. To whom is inequality an existential threat other than inequality, right? . . .
“The same charges are levied against the BDS call. That’s because the BDS call says we want an end to the occupation, we want a right of return for Palestinian refugees in line with international law, and we want equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel. Those three things are considered an existential threat to Israel precisely because Israel’s existence, as they see it, is dependent upon a system of inequality.”
I too have been thinking a lot about the overbearing fear you reference, mainly for personal reasons. I've written elsewhere about an interpersonal exchange that really did set in some trauma that lasted for about two days, during which I wondered if the vast majority of people -- complete strangers -- held biased views about me. So that fear is one I had to confront, and it's one, like a skin, I had to shed. It did no one any favors.
Of course, that fear wasn't tied to a policy, and it certainly wasn't tied to an identity. Zionism, as far as I've been able to tell, necessitates a belief that the world, the whole wide world, is just seething with hate for oneself, the believer. It's an article of faith. I don't know if Zionists see that it's an article of faith, but I sure do. As others such as Tony Greenstein have said, Zionism and anti-semitism have a near-symbiotic relationship.
I recently learned of a concept that put the whole thing in perspective: it's called metadehumanization. It's when someone anticipates that others will dehumanize them, and so they get the jump on them first. In actuality, it's a pre-emptive self-dehumanization. It's quite pernicious, and I don't know how people step out of that loop.
Novapsyche, with all respect, I believe that we need to also examine the phrase "From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free" in the original Arabic. As you point out, we do find it in Hamas’ Charter.
In Arabic, من النهر إلى البحر (min an-nahr ʾilā l-baḥr) and in Palestinian Arabic, من المية للمية (min il-ṃayye la-l-ṃayye), the meaning becomes brutally clear, especially in the latter. An accurate transliteration is "From the water to the water, Palestine is Arab."
In other words, there can be no room whatsoever for a Jewish state!
Clearly this latter phrase – like the Hamas Charter – calls for the destruction of the State of Israel.
Which compels us to ask: Is it or is it not antisemitic to call for the destruction of the State of Israel? What are your thoughts?
.
Some of the protests at American universities and elsewhere, although being portrayed as Pro-Palestinian, are actually Pro-Hamas. I believe that is a serious problem – and the news media are failing to make the distinction.
As an example, please listen to these statements by Khymani James, the leader of the "Pro-Palestinian" protests at Columbia University.
What is especially ironic about the pro-Hamas sentiments of the openly-queer Khymani James is that he would, in Gaza, find himself subject to the rather-abrupt Hamas "justice".
You bring up things that do not pertain to my post. I'm not talking about Khymani James, mainly because I've only heard about him in passing. As I understand it, he has suffered quite a bit for his extreme rhetoric. What he should have done is limit his words to the ideology and not project to persons. (As to whether his words rose to the level of imminent threat, that is a question for lawyers. Either way, he disgraced himself and set back the protest's cause, whereas many other campus encampment leaders have stayed on message. Not all of these protests can be reduced to what one person said.)
So, that's to the side. As for the phrase itself, I'm not here debating what it means in Arabic. One, I don't speak Arabic, so I would be doing bad scholarship to attempt to wade into that area. Second, the transliteration into English is specifically my focus, because it's English-speaking activists using the term in English, and it's an English-speaking audience interpreting English words. I would put the Arabic formulation toward the historical end of the discussion, which I note very explicitly that I am not treating that aspect. I'm only looking at the logic involved in inferring that a person who uses this phrase is automatically anti-semitic. That is illogical on its face.
I've already pointed out the logical fallacy involved. Another person who is more learned about this issue in general and who has examined this as well (though not about this phrase specifically) is Brian Klug, a well-respected scholar. He notes in "Interrogating 'new antisemitism'" (Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2012, p. 480):
" Looming over this whole debate is the idea that the State of Israel is, in Herzl’s phrase, der
Judenstaat, the state of the Jews, and that such a state was created as an alternative to anti-Semitism. For, if Zionism is the negation of antiSemitism, and if anti-Zionism is the negation of Zionism, this seems to mean, by the law of double-negation, that anti-Zionism is the
affirmation of anti-Semitism. Not that anyone is likely to endorse this (fallacious) line of reasoning if it is stated. But, I suggest, the unstated inference is at work with both the qualitative and the quantitative versions of the ‘new anti-Semitism’ claim, giving rise to the presumption that hostility to Zionism or Israel is anti-Semitic.
But the presumption is unfounded. There are, apart from antiSemitism, many reasons why people -- individuals, groups, movements or states -- might feel hostile to Zionism or Israel. Here are some that come to mind: a commitment to human rights and international law; anti-colonialism; an Arabist agenda; an Islamist agenda; a conviction about the conditions for peaceful coexistence of states in the region; a view about the best kind of future for Jews and Palestinians in the area west of the Jordan River; rejection of ethnic nationalism in general; denial of the view that the Jewish people is a nation in the modern sense of the word; sympathy for the Palestinian cause; even a view about what is best for Israel. So diverse are these reasons that some are
at odds with others. Some will also strike some people as worthier than others. But none of them, in and of itself, is anti-Semitic: none pins a yellow star (so to speak) on the Jewish state."
I highly recommend reading the whole essay, because he deals much more deeply with the flaws in the logical flaw being employed therein. He uses five examples to excellent effect.
Beyond Krug, there's also Medhi Hasan, who recently said during an interview with Naomi Klein that in his view it's nonsense that those external to a person can redefine what the person who is speaking means to say:
"You know, activist slogans, we don't always agree with them. They're not always the most strategic slogans. But the reality is that if an activist is telling you that this is what it means, you don't get to go and reinterpret it and weaponize it for your own purposes."
He goes on to speak specifically about "from the river to the sea."
To wrap, I would say that your formulation of an anti-Zionist sentiment as being "pro-Hamas" (I have yet to see anyone actually express support for Hamas in any of the fora that I visit -- ANY) is falling prey to the same logical fallacy that I, Krug and Hasan expose here. You should rethink and re-examine, in my humble opinion.
Thank you for replying. I will look at the links and sources you quote. But your Mehdi Hasan quote deserves an immediate response:
"You know, activist slogans, we don't always agree with them. They're not always the most strategic slogans. But the reality is that if an activist is telling you that this is what it means, you don't get to go and reinterpret it and weaponize it for your own purposes."
Really??
So if a Tiki-torch-carrying activist is marching through Charlottesville under the slogans "All lives matter" and "White lives matter", they get to tell me (dictate) what each slogan means? And I "don’t get to go and reinterpret it", nor does anyone else??
Novapsyche, I don’t think you actually agree with that. I most certainly do not!
All good points! It seems that no one can claim total ownership of the phrase (no surprise). Can such a contentious history of the phrase be set aside long enough to rehabilitate it into something universally positive? Until then cannot people use it for their own purpose as they describe it and be respected when the purpose is peaceful and honorable?
I stand very firmly on my position: I don't know. I have to give up on it. My background is in data analysis and design and so that last paragraph really resonates. (On Meerloo I caught this in Wiki: "He was the youngest of six children and the only one to escape his occupied country and survive the Holocaust.")
Context is so hugely critical to having any functional language at all. Even with the mundane: I had a job long ago in which three departments of a railroad could not reconcile their monthly records of the train crews. Operations, HR and accounting. Consider a train with 4 employees: 2 engineers, 1 brakeman, 1 fireman. To one department that was one crew, another 3 crews and the last 4 crews.
Hmm. I've been wondering what would be the best way to respond to your comment, and upon rereading I'm struck by your idea of rehabilitation. It's striking because it reminds me of some of the material I was reading about the reclamation of slurs (which is funny, as we were speaking about slurs in an outside discussion).
Even among linguists and philologists, it's up in the air as to whether slurs can ever truly be reclaimed or rescued from their function as asserting a derogatory status upon its target. But we see marginalized communities try to do just that. This is especially true in the LGBTQ+ communities, notably with the retrofitting of 'queer', turning the term, if not entirely positive, then decidedly neutral, from a connotation that had been emphatically negative. So I think there's something to be said about the possibility of taking away or fundamentally changing the semantic / semiotic core of a word or phrase.
Slogans are their own animal. They're almost impossible to craft intentionally and, once one accumulates or is endowed with power, they're almost impossible to stamp out. I came across a fascinating article from just about a century ago, by an esteemed sociologist named Muzafer Sherif. He details different aspects of slogans and relates them partially to functions in propaganda (which is why I was reading the piece in the first place).
"The Psychology of Slogans" (1937): https://sci-hub.hkvisa.net/10.1037/h0056327
Another great resource I encountered was Frederick Lumley's "Slogans as a Means of Social Control" (1921): https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=osu.32435006251276&view=1up&seq=1
As for Meerloo, I did not know that about his background, but I know he was keenly focused on the particularities and intricacies of totalitarianism. He's also written about language, though I haven't yet invested the time -- I should give his work a hearing. It's _Conversation and Communication_ (1953).
This is very clear and helpful. Great essay! What I notice going on with this phrase is that so many Zionists live in fear. A democracy with equal rights for all seems like a threat to them because they truly believe they will always be oppressed if they don’t dominate. It’s tragic—and still more tragic because the oppression of the 20th century was real and should never be minimized.
But it’s just not true that all of us non-Jews hate Jews and wish to oppress them. It’s not true that every non-Jew is automatically an antisemite. I don’t know what we can do to combat this pervasive fear.
By the by, Yousef Munayyer was featured on Jadaliyya a few months back, and he spoke about democracy as an idea that brings terror to those looking to maintain a demographic majority in Israel:
~ 51:23: “So when we are hearing these things being characterized as annihilationist or genocidal, it’s important to understand what is meant by that. The idea of equality is considered an existential threat. We’re not talking about violence, right? We’re talking about equality before the law. Even equality before the law is considered an existential threat to the Israeli state.
“So when these things are called annihilationist, it is an effort to distract from what they are really calling for, because the idea that equality is an existential threat is nonsense. To whom is inequality an existential threat other than inequality, right? . . .
“The same charges are levied against the BDS call. That’s because the BDS call says we want an end to the occupation, we want a right of return for Palestinian refugees in line with international law, and we want equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel. Those three things are considered an existential threat to Israel precisely because Israel’s existence, as they see it, is dependent upon a system of inequality.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUh0mxkMIOU
I too have been thinking a lot about the overbearing fear you reference, mainly for personal reasons. I've written elsewhere about an interpersonal exchange that really did set in some trauma that lasted for about two days, during which I wondered if the vast majority of people -- complete strangers -- held biased views about me. So that fear is one I had to confront, and it's one, like a skin, I had to shed. It did no one any favors.
Of course, that fear wasn't tied to a policy, and it certainly wasn't tied to an identity. Zionism, as far as I've been able to tell, necessitates a belief that the world, the whole wide world, is just seething with hate for oneself, the believer. It's an article of faith. I don't know if Zionists see that it's an article of faith, but I sure do. As others such as Tony Greenstein have said, Zionism and anti-semitism have a near-symbiotic relationship.
I recently learned of a concept that put the whole thing in perspective: it's called metadehumanization. It's when someone anticipates that others will dehumanize them, and so they get the jump on them first. In actuality, it's a pre-emptive self-dehumanization. It's quite pernicious, and I don't know how people step out of that loop.
https://sci-hub.yncjkj.com/10.1037/pspa0000044
Novapsyche, with all respect, I believe that we need to also examine the phrase "From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free" in the original Arabic. As you point out, we do find it in Hamas’ Charter.
In Arabic, من النهر إلى البحر (min an-nahr ʾilā l-baḥr) and in Palestinian Arabic, من المية للمية (min il-ṃayye la-l-ṃayye), the meaning becomes brutally clear, especially in the latter. An accurate transliteration is "From the water to the water, Palestine is Arab."
In other words, there can be no room whatsoever for a Jewish state!
Clearly this latter phrase – like the Hamas Charter – calls for the destruction of the State of Israel.
Which compels us to ask: Is it or is it not antisemitic to call for the destruction of the State of Israel? What are your thoughts?
.
Some of the protests at American universities and elsewhere, although being portrayed as Pro-Palestinian, are actually Pro-Hamas. I believe that is a serious problem – and the news media are failing to make the distinction.
As an example, please listen to these statements by Khymani James, the leader of the "Pro-Palestinian" protests at Columbia University.
https://twitter.com/Sarah_G_Barker/status/1783859290115076331
What is especially ironic about the pro-Hamas sentiments of the openly-queer Khymani James is that he would, in Gaza, find himself subject to the rather-abrupt Hamas "justice".
.
You bring up things that do not pertain to my post. I'm not talking about Khymani James, mainly because I've only heard about him in passing. As I understand it, he has suffered quite a bit for his extreme rhetoric. What he should have done is limit his words to the ideology and not project to persons. (As to whether his words rose to the level of imminent threat, that is a question for lawyers. Either way, he disgraced himself and set back the protest's cause, whereas many other campus encampment leaders have stayed on message. Not all of these protests can be reduced to what one person said.)
So, that's to the side. As for the phrase itself, I'm not here debating what it means in Arabic. One, I don't speak Arabic, so I would be doing bad scholarship to attempt to wade into that area. Second, the transliteration into English is specifically my focus, because it's English-speaking activists using the term in English, and it's an English-speaking audience interpreting English words. I would put the Arabic formulation toward the historical end of the discussion, which I note very explicitly that I am not treating that aspect. I'm only looking at the logic involved in inferring that a person who uses this phrase is automatically anti-semitic. That is illogical on its face.
I've already pointed out the logical fallacy involved. Another person who is more learned about this issue in general and who has examined this as well (though not about this phrase specifically) is Brian Klug, a well-respected scholar. He notes in "Interrogating 'new antisemitism'" (Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2012, p. 480):
" Looming over this whole debate is the idea that the State of Israel is, in Herzl’s phrase, der
Judenstaat, the state of the Jews, and that such a state was created as an alternative to anti-Semitism. For, if Zionism is the negation of antiSemitism, and if anti-Zionism is the negation of Zionism, this seems to mean, by the law of double-negation, that anti-Zionism is the
affirmation of anti-Semitism. Not that anyone is likely to endorse this (fallacious) line of reasoning if it is stated. But, I suggest, the unstated inference is at work with both the qualitative and the quantitative versions of the ‘new anti-Semitism’ claim, giving rise to the presumption that hostility to Zionism or Israel is anti-Semitic.
But the presumption is unfounded. There are, apart from antiSemitism, many reasons why people -- individuals, groups, movements or states -- might feel hostile to Zionism or Israel. Here are some that come to mind: a commitment to human rights and international law; anti-colonialism; an Arabist agenda; an Islamist agenda; a conviction about the conditions for peaceful coexistence of states in the region; a view about the best kind of future for Jews and Palestinians in the area west of the Jordan River; rejection of ethnic nationalism in general; denial of the view that the Jewish people is a nation in the modern sense of the word; sympathy for the Palestinian cause; even a view about what is best for Israel. So diverse are these reasons that some are
at odds with others. Some will also strike some people as worthier than others. But none of them, in and of itself, is anti-Semitic: none pins a yellow star (so to speak) on the Jewish state."
https://sci-hub.yncjkj.com/10.1080/01419870.2013.734385
I highly recommend reading the whole essay, because he deals much more deeply with the flaws in the logical flaw being employed therein. He uses five examples to excellent effect.
Beyond Krug, there's also Medhi Hasan, who recently said during an interview with Naomi Klein that in his view it's nonsense that those external to a person can redefine what the person who is speaking means to say:
"You know, activist slogans, we don't always agree with them. They're not always the most strategic slogans. But the reality is that if an activist is telling you that this is what it means, you don't get to go and reinterpret it and weaponize it for your own purposes."
He goes on to speak specifically about "from the river to the sea."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hjt9M1CS9Qs&t=1543
To wrap, I would say that your formulation of an anti-Zionist sentiment as being "pro-Hamas" (I have yet to see anyone actually express support for Hamas in any of the fora that I visit -- ANY) is falling prey to the same logical fallacy that I, Krug and Hasan expose here. You should rethink and re-examine, in my humble opinion.
Thank you for replying. I will look at the links and sources you quote. But your Mehdi Hasan quote deserves an immediate response:
"You know, activist slogans, we don't always agree with them. They're not always the most strategic slogans. But the reality is that if an activist is telling you that this is what it means, you don't get to go and reinterpret it and weaponize it for your own purposes."
Really??
So if a Tiki-torch-carrying activist is marching through Charlottesville under the slogans "All lives matter" and "White lives matter", they get to tell me (dictate) what each slogan means? And I "don’t get to go and reinterpret it", nor does anyone else??
Novapsyche, I don’t think you actually agree with that. I most certainly do not!