Meta’s company-funded oversight body ruled Wednesday that the social media giant shouldn’t automatically take down posts using the phrase “from the river to the sea,” a decades-old rallying cry for Palestinian nationalism that has reignited a national debate about the boundaries of acceptable speech.
Meta’s Oversight Board, an independent collection of academics, experts and lawyers who oversee thorny content decisions on the platform, said posts they examined using the phrase didn’t violate the company’s rules against hate speech, inciting violence or praising dangerous organizations.
“While [the phrase] can be understood by some as encouraging and legitimizing antisemitism and the violent elimination of Israel and its people, it is also often used as a political call for solidarity, equal rights and self-determination of the Palestinian people, and to end the war in Gaza,” the board said in its ruling.
Padme: so it will be ok when Jews say it too, right?
Anakin:
Padme: right??
Jews can certainly act in solidarity with Palestine. Many do.
Or are you alluding to Zionists using the phrase as a rallying cry to justify their indiscriminate mass slaughter of the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West bank?
As usual with charged phrases, context is king. A cry of solidarity for a people enduring genocide? Likely okay. A call for mass murders to escalate their mass murder to new heights? Not okay.
Are we taking the position that it is the Jews who are oppressed here?
Meta have decided that an individual saying “from the river to the sea” neither implies support for a state actor (Hamas in this case) nor does it constitute hate speech in itself (the call for a Palestinian state to cover the ground currently mostly occupied by Israel is apparently not a call to violence against Israel or the Jews living there)
None of this has anything to do with the dynamics of the current conflict, meta do not mention it. Incitement to hatred or violence occurs between individuals. And meta have determined that a Palestinian (or anyone) saying that phrase is not expressing hatred for Jews nor inciting violence by implying that Israel should be removed.
So if they are being consistent with that logic then a Jew saying the same thing “does not imply support for the Israeli state or its actions”, in the same way that a Palestinian saying it does not imply Hamas support.
Similarly, if a Palestinian saying it is not attempting incitement to violence (Hamas’ actions notwithstanding), then a Jew saying it is not attempting incitement to violence (the actions of the Israeli state notwithstanding)
For the record I would regard the phrase said by either side as hate speech / incitement and I think meta’s ruling is silly.