More info on the Queensland laws: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/mar/05/queensland-pro-palestinian-phrase-ban-river-to-sea-laws-ntwnfb
More info on the Queensland laws: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/mar/05/queensland-pro-palestinian-phrase-ban-river-to-sea-laws-ntwnfb
1.5 “from the river to the sea” is not a slogan calling for the destruction of Israel.
It 100% is, and pretending it isn’t just makes it worse.
What a silly thing to say. Here are a few examples of actual genocidal language:
Galit Distel Atbaryan (Likud MK, former Public Diplomacy Minister): Called for “erasing all of Gaza from the face of the Earth” and described the enclave as needing to be “wiped out”.
Amit Halevi (Likud MK): Stated that the goal of the war is that there is “no more Muslim land in the land of Israel” and suggested leaving Gaza as a “monument, like Sodom”.
Nissim Vaturi (Deputy Speaker of the Knesset, Likud): Stated in February 2025 that “all adults in Gaza should be killed” and that “the children and women need to be separated and the adults in Gaza eliminated”.
Boaz Bismuth (Likud MK): Invoked the biblical reference to “erase the memory of Amalek,” a phrase frequently interpreted as a call for the total destruction of an enemy, similar to references made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Ariel Kallner (Likud MK): Urged a “Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of '48,” referencing the 1948 forced displacement of Palestinians.
Tally Gotliv (Likud MK): Demanded “crushing and flattening Gaza without mercy”. Hnoch Milwidsky (Likud MK): In a 2026 report, was cited as having stated during a debate that “it is legitimate” for soldiers to rape Palestinians.
By defining the geographic scope of a future Palestinian state as the entire territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, the slogan encompasses the land where Israel currently exists. To remove all doubt about the context, remember that it has been widely used by groups like Hamas - whose founding charter explicitly calls for the elimination of Israel.
I’m sure there are people who use this phrase now and do not wish to destroy Israel. Just like there are people who use phrases like “all lives matter” and genuinely want racial equality. Unfortunately the terms are hard to disambiguate from the people chanting them.
Either way, we won’t settle this argument now, and we don’t have to. I simply do not wish to see people imprisoned for saying offensive things. That seems like an important pillar of democracy to me. I uphold the rights of people to say offensive things especially when I disagree with them. Free speech means nothing unless we’re doing it when it’s really hard.
If your interpretation of “Palestine will be free” somehow includes killing people because they’re Jewish, then you’re telling on yourself.
It’s really simple, and didn’t require a text wall to explain.
Additionally, genocidal speech is a crime, or evidence thereof at least, and rightly so.
This is not part of the original call to action. That is a modern addition used very selectively. It is frequently omitted, as we see on the t-shirt on the activist in the article. Selectively adding a nice phrase on the end of a very bad phrase doesn’t erase the original meaning, intent, and history of the phrase.
Please also note that I did not suggest that the slogan is a call to kill all Jews. The slogan is a call to destroy Israel. Those are not mutually inclusive. Palestinian activists argue that when right wing Israelis call for the destruction of Palestine, that does constitute intent to commit genocide, and I agree. So I don’t have much tolerance for hypocrisy on this. I find the call to destroy any nation - be it Israel or Palestine - to be incredibly immoral.
I’m failing to see how the phrase “from the river to the sea”, alone, can be considered a call to destroy Israel, let alone unequivocally genocidal. It seems like there’s a lot of top-down reasoning required to arrive at that conclusion. I don’t think there is genocidal intent on the deployment of those words on that woman’s top. I think you assume too much. Israeli leaders, on the other hand, use unmistakably genocidal language. And then they also commit genocide. You don’t get to both sides this issue with a very tenuous argument that this popular slogan is a call to genocide.
This is like saying “I don’t see how the phrase “white power” alone can be considered a call to kill black people?” 🤣
It is a call to destroy/eliminate Israel. Don’t try to pretend it’s not.
No, it isn’t like that. Because “white power” is used exclusively by extremists, whereby “from the river to the sea” is not. Do you see the difference there?
The same Wikipedia article hints at both Zionist and Palestinian use of a similar phrase even before PLO adopted it, so I am not sure if we can just plainly state that the cited sentiment is the original one behind this phrase.
I have a honest question though - if one calls for a one state solution, would you say that it always entails destroying one or the other?
In my imagination, even if it’s quite naïve, if there ever was a peaceful one-state resolution to this mess, it would indeed require superseding the ethno-state of Israel, but I don’t think it would necessarily be a destruction per se - similarly when the Russian Empire was superseded by the USSR, one could say that the Empire was destroyed but to me it was more of a regime change and policy shift (of course forced by a brutal civil war, but still, I don’t think it was destruction in a way we’d normally imagine when hearing the word). The Russian state essentially persisted, just in a different form.
When Menachem Begin’s Likud party won the 1977 elections, its official platform explicitly laid out a vision for the land that excluded any possibility of a Palestinian state. The relevant section states: “The right of the Jewish people to the land of Israel is eternal and indisputable… therefore, Judea and Samaria will not be handed to any foreign administration; between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.” It sounds kind of similar, and has been used by right wing parties since at various times. I condemn its use by them too.
This would require a 300 page document to answer. To shorten it, it would depend on things like the structure of the plan, the intent, the citizens involved, the negotiations, the history, and many other factors. As I have heard a one-state solution described by both Israel and Palestine leaders, they don’t want that. They want the other state to dissolve and be replaced by their respective states. Their positions are so unbelievably intractable it is impossible to ever envision a one-state solution.
When I was younger I believed that a one-state solution were possible, but things have only deteriorated in my lifetime and having had long conversations with citizens of both nations, I cannot ever conceive of such a plan working. They hold a level of hatred for each other that is generational, built by collective trauma and pain, oppositional religious views which are extremely dogmatic, and a history which is literally Biblical.
Thanks for your perspective
And yours.
Except one state is the colonist and the other is getting genocided. How does it feel twosiding a genocide