cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/44131480
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
Banning words. Next will be books. Fuck the fash.
They already banning books in USA…
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They didn’t say the US has banned books at the federal level. Book bans are book bans, and the US has book bans.
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You just said there’s no banned books and then said there’s banned books.
Its hair splitting. Libraries are controlled by a variety of institutions, sometimes non-profits or municipalities. The 1st amendment prevents the federal government from banning protected speech, but private entities can do what they like. (like moderators on a forum).
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So you’re saying or not saying that there are books banned within the USA?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_banning_in_the_United_States_(2021–present)
Unless you’re going to use the “from a certain point of view” argument, this is demonstrably false.
That’s the thing tho, they are doing these bannings at low level places like those to get those books already out of as many places as they can while maintaining a veil of legitimacy as they haven’t done in a national level, therefore they aren’t “banning bonds” just like you’re argumentive, but the effect is not too dissimilar from banning them at a federal level, less people are getting access to critical information that allows them to learn of how evil the government has been and currently is
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What is this? https://legiscan.com/TX/bill/HB900/2023
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Australia is quietly speed running censorship.
Depends on.
For example: I hold up a Sign, where I demand the Death of (insert minority here). Should this be legal?
yes, as should be calling you out on it.
Is that what happened here??
Ignoring the fact that that’s the literal opposite of what happened here… Who should decide whether that’s legal, and to what extent should they be able to decide what is and isn’t legal to say?
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I guess I ought to clarify my position. The line should be drawn well on the side of freedom of expression. Emotive expressions should virtually always be legal. As long as there isn’t reason to believe that a thing that someone says is going to lead to a crime being committed, any punishment for that speech is unwarranted. That includes things like “I demand the death of (insert minority here).”
Unless you can convince a jury of that person’s peers that that particular expression was going to lead to a particular crime being committed against a particular person (like, if I said “here’s a gun, go kill that guy”), that speech should be legally protected.
Found the stochastic terrorist.
What if I have a shirt that says “From the river” and my friend has a shirt that says “To the sea?”
Would we be arrested for standing too close to each other?
What if we stood the wrong way round, and our shirts read “To the sea from the river?” Would that be an offense?
What if the shirt was in the form of a rebus, with pictures and/or wordplay as stand-ins for words like “river” and “sea?”
What if it were a remix that nevertheless put the original slogan in your head: “River. Sea. Some assembly required?”
Being against genocide illegal in Australia. Actually, that tracks with my understanding of Australia
Imagine having this few criminals in Australia that you have the space to incarcerate people for free speech?
We’re busy incarcerating non-violent offenders while we let out murderers because we don’t have the space.
She walks like a total badass.
Yeah, that’s not the face or body language of someone who’s anywhere near cowed ✊🏼
Imagine killing any fewer than 165 little girls.
FROM THE RIVER
TO THE SEA
PALESTINE WILL BE FREE
FROM THE SEA
TO THE RIVER
PALESTINE WILL LIVE FOREVER
Free Palestine
it’s getting closer, Israel is so close to collapsing. every day Iran fires on Israel is a day where its economy is completely halted. It’s stretched incredibly thin with all their war fronts. they are becoming extremely unpopular, US population is now more in favor of Palestine than Israel. as soon as the USA stops supporting Israel (and the USA doesn’t become a Trump dictatorship… fuck it already is) Israel will become a pariah state with little support.
I don’t think you have any idea how much reach Israel has in the US. How much of the US is actually controlled by Israeli interest groups. And how many Zionists live in america. Israel is nowhere near collapse. And US support is nowhere near gone.
I hate it and I wish I could personally gut every one of the tyrannical bastards involved. But I and many others that feel similarly are ultimately without power to change this. Protesting only works when those in power have a conscience. We need a violent uprising to effect any change in the US and that won’t happen. Not through lack of desire but through the inability to gather in appropriate numbers.
Edit:just saw in another comment that you are Israeli so maybe you have an insight that I don’t. But from a US perspective I just don’t see anything changing.
no doubt AIPAC and ADL have a hold of US politics. however, it’s a very fragile hold. people are waking up and primarying out candidates that take AIPAC cash.
and taking AIPAC money for campaign funds is useless if it makes you unelectable.
I can only hope. I appreciate your optimism since I feel like mine died years ago.
if you can. check your local Dems, regardless of how much they suck, and see if there’s an actual progressive running, then vote for them in the primaries.
Don’t forget CUFI. These people are genuinely nuts. My old church had a CUFI pastor before I realized he was intentionally misreading the bible to promote his agenda. Wild stuff.
never heard of them. and i was happier not knowing they existed
I felt the same way. Spreading the joy.
AIPAC has some tacticians among them. They know the acronym itself is hated and mistrusted. But, it’s very common and possible for reasonable people to see a convincing political ad, and not ever realize it was funded by AIPAC indirectly.
technically, AIPAC doesn’t give anyone campaign funds or political donations. they have clever legal ways around lots of laws.
their modus operandi is to connect politicians looking for bribes with rich individual who will bribe them on AIPAC’s behalf. so it’s never a foreign interest group bringing politicians.
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no income inequality? trust in government? 20% of Israelis are arabs and are legally second class citizens, high poverty rates, and definitely a mistrust in the government. and that is only considering those Israel considers as people, as Palestinians under occupation have no rights at all. so bullshit, there is massive inequality and mistrust of the government.
my understanding of the damages Iran is causing comes from family I have in Israel, even though the total destruction is minimal, the actual effect for Israel is a total economic pause in practically all productivity. Given that during bombings, they have to spend the time hiding in shelters (which only Jewish communities get, arab Israeli communities only get mocked if hit).
Lol, they closed the port in Eilat, it literally went bankrupt.
Latest polls call on your bullshit, there is more support for Palestine than Israel in the US.
my question is, why is a Russian propagandist doing Hasbara work?
I am not sure about “will be” but I certainly hope Palestinians get a chance to live a happy and worry-free live again - with the Israeli population understanding the horrors committed in their name, war criminals brought to justice and a peaceful nation of Israel in the future. One can dream.
Israeli population doesn’t give a shite about the atrocities they are committing, some do, but they are such a minority.
it will collapse the moment the US stops funding it. And if the dems want to win ever again they must. given that recently the polls show that more Americans support Palestine instead of Israel.
Propaganda is unfortunately very effective, and the majority of the Israeli population, similar to the ‘murica population, similar to the population of Putinland, and many others in the world, has taken the bait of hate hook, line and sinker. That doesn’t mean the average Israeli was born more or less evil than you or me. Which means every new generation has a chance of being better than their parents’ generation.
Being propagandized do not gives you a pass
Israeli population is without a doubt evil, they keep voting for genocide and apartheid. Not doing a genocide is a fringe idea there. you can blame generations of propaganda, but you can’t use that to absolve them for the horrors they created.
I have a problem with the use of the word “evil”, and even when I do it myself, I am aware it is only a crutch to describe people with what I consider to be brain (developmental) damage to the point of narcissism and having no empathy.
But as I said, propaganda is strong. Calling the Israeli population evil is misunderstanding the problem and is accordingly not helpful at all in finding a solution (which I do not have either). That said, yes, it is shocking what evil acts are okay with people in Israel, but there are hundreds of millions of people in other parts of the world who also find such atrocities acceptable. And in my own country of origin, Germany, we definitely have our own share of people who do not give a fuck about the Palestinians and shrug off the ongoing genocide as “self defense”.
What is happening is horrible, but dehumanizing Israelis is NOT a solution - but it’s a really dangerous path towards keeping a blood feud alive.
I’m talking from lived experience, I am Israeli, I lived there, have family there. And they are incredibly racist people. you can blame generations of propaganda, but the reality that they are extremely hateful towards arabs.
the first joke my roommate told me at work “what do you call an arab drawning in the sea? pollution, how do you call 9 million (Palestinian population at the time) arabs drawning in the sea? Solution”.
Yes, I met some who hated it, and wanted peace and equality with arabs (still wouldn’t call them Palestinians), but they are a tiny minority.
they keep voting for this genocide, they celebrate it. they go to places to see the bombs falling as if it where a fire works show. they made a fuzz about the right of prison guards to rape Palestinians, turning the guard who raped Palestinian prisoners into a national hero.
whatever the reason (you can bring up the Standford prison experiment) they are evil, and if you want to disagree, you can’t disagree that they act evil. they see their neighbors and not see them as human. If we wait for their consent to end the genocide, it’ll never end.
whatever the reason (you can bring up the Standford prison experiment) they are evil, and if you want to disagree, you can’t disagree that they act evil. they see their neighbors and not see them as human. If we wait for their consent to end the genocide, it’ll never end.
You make the relevant distinction yourself: “they” (I don’t like the word when there’s clearly exceptions) act evil. No doubt about that. That doesn’t mean Israeli people are inherently worse or better than the rest of us.
And in the current scenario, there’s no consent to be awaited, but the necessary international action to boycott Israel (and other genocidal/ terrorist states) at all fronts is simply not happening, and that is depressing.
Unlikely. Every civilization collapses eventually.
civilization collapses, people remain.
Every living thing goes extinct, eventually.
so you’re a contrarian who’s just being a cunt and considers a genocide to be a good place to showcase your idiocy
The point of the chant is that by resisting the genocide we are all Palestinian. We participate because we believe in the self-determination and human rights of all peoples. By resisting Israeli and US aggression and oppression, we are all Palestinian.
I wish it was so, for solidarity, I want to say I’m Palestinian. but I can’t shake the reality that I’m Israeli, and even though I left in 2010, I still technically am, and all my family served in the IDF.
Can’t wait for apartheid to collapse.
So bullshit. And more bullshit.
Well, shit.
You know in Canada they had so many Caribou on the ice and snow … it’s melting and these black layers of solid Caribou shit are appearing.
They’re also finding 9,000 year old weapons designed to kill those Caribou.
Cool stuff. Anthropology.
I guarantee you. Palestinians will end with less evidence for their existence.
lol, it’s a protest slogan not a political treatise, are you going to nitpick it?
Blocked.
Yes literally a genocide slogan no matter which side uses it.
Only if you internalize the racist premise that freedom in a region can only be achieved by expelling all other ethnic groups. The slogan is a rorschach test; it reveals the ideology of the interpreter. If you interpret “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” as genocidal it demonstrates that you don’t believe Palestinians and Israelis can coexist as equals.
I really like how you’ve phrased this here — I think I’m going to end up borrowing aspects of your explanation to use myself. The person you’re replying to in this thread seems too entrenched in their opinion to hear the point you’re making here, but I not too infrequently find myself trying to explain the nuance of this phrase to people who are pro-palestinian liberation, but unsure about this particular slogan because they (quite reasonably) don’t want to inadvertently respond to a genocide with pro-genocide.
I’ve usually had good success in explaining why “from the river to the sea” isn’t inherently a pro-genocide slogan, but I feel like your explanation will help me to do this more effectively in future.
You can make up whatever kind of bullshit defense for genocidal slogans as you want and deflect this to be an issue of the interpreter. The reality of course is that the slogan means literally what the people using it has said several times that they want to do - drive the enemies out to of the levant and in to the sea i.e genocide.
Palestinians and Israeli estates demonstratably can not co exist, they have tried for well over a hundred years now and they just keep murdering each other.
The Zionist state cannot coexist with anyone. it is the genocidal state. calling against “From the river to the sea” is the call for genocide.
but from your point of view, resisting a genocide is as bad as conducting one. so your opinion is invalid.
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it’s been almost a century of Zionists trying to eradicate Palestine, yet it’s still there.
you’re the idiot who treats this as a sports match.
it’s a settler colonial state conducting a genocide against the natives. and you’re understanding is that natives not wanting to die are as bad as those monsters killing them?
You’re losing and you know it, your shithole ethnostate is living on borrowed time
The Palestinian state famously in existence in the last 100+ years and famously expelling and persecuting their Jewish population.
Using light sabres and expeliarmus spells, while lead by the Dovahkiin Nazgûl, Indiana Jones and Drizzt.
When you both-sides genocide, at least get your fucking facts straight.
Are you suggesting that the official political position of the palestinian leadership is not to ethnically cleanse palestine?
The occupied are not evil. Get lost , you are just a racist
Gtfo.
Sounds like they haven’t tried.
You just a racist
"being free"in reference of an illegal occupation.
THAT’S A CALL FOR GENOCIDE!!!
did freeing concentration camps after WW2 count as a genocide?
I mean, there’s really only one way to reasonably achieve that and it’s the one that Israel chose to do first.
Israel can just expand the right of return and apartheid will be over. the whole war and conflict would be over and it’ll being a reconstruction period where those responsible, should face justice for their crimes.
we are getting violent resistance movements, because those who are lawful were banned, and those who were peaceful got executed.
BEIng fReE from… omg stfu we all know exactly what it means. Its a call for the cleansing of the lands of the eternal enemy, whether its said by israelies or by palestinians. Its absolutely insane that there are people who defend genocidal slogans.
lol, you have never talked to any Palestinians?
When apartheid ended in south Africa, did it end with all the white people being executed?
they want the right of return. they want equal rights. and definitely, some genociders belong in jail.
I don’t know that the South African model was ever possible in Israel, the government is far more entrenched, it is more like trying to usurp the American or Australian government than any other colonialist government.
In SA they also had a 9:1 ratio advantage, the rest of the world’s governments were pressuring with trade embargoes and it was still incredibly difficult to get any movement.
But as an example, truth and reconciliation would be an amazing thing to see in this context. Maybe one day.
as soon as US support ends (dems need to pay attention if they ever want to win an election again), All international support for Israel will end. and it’ll become a pariah state, full of embargoes and sanctions. it’ll collapse by itself.
I think “if US support ever ends”, but yes. We live in hope!
Instead of getting angry you could research what that slogan means to different groups. For nearly every group that slogan currently means freedom for everyone from the river to the sea. Most accounts of early use meaning freedom for Palestine not just from Israel, but from Jordan and Egypt as well. The one group that used it in a mostly genocidal undertone was the PLO in the 1960’s who believed it meant returning the whole region to Palestinian rule, and ‘removing’ all people that immigrated in the last hundred years. As with most things it requires nuance. It can mean something bad, but these days most people use it to mean freedom. Intentionally taking it to mean something other than how people mean to use it seems disingenuous.
Really? You don’t even need to be naked in public to get arrested?
There should be exception for attractive nude women :)
And you should probably be banned from public spaces.
How about I feel attractive and idgaf about you
In germany for a man being nude in public is illegal but not for woman.
I like Germany now!
I’m going to take a shower now.
In America, we have this thing called “Freedom of Speech”, so this could never happen here.
Right?
Oh my god.
The genocides against the native population were long ago.
America is the blueprint for what Israel wants to be.
If Israel is not held accountable now, they will eventually treat “immigrants” the same way America does, give them a generation or two.
All these things are going away, supported by people who disagree with what they say. Because wisdom is rare now. It will probably need to be a massive war so people again can learn how to be wise afterwards.
That slogan is used by both Israelis and Palestinians.
Yes, but it’s only allowed to be used by one of those groups.
Palestinians say “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, which means free from occupation and free for all who live on it.
Zionists want you to believe that it’s an antiemetic slogan, their actually genocidal version is pushing for Jewish only occupation from the river to the sea.
Antisalmon ypu mean. That is the term. Spread it.
It’s a slogan that is coopted by Israelis. It “belongs” to Palestinians.
So they stole that too.
“These warmongering murderers are using our music without our consent. This makes us both nauseous and furious. Kind of typical though, isn’t it? To strut up and take what isn’t theirs with a vile arrogance…” -Alex Kapranos, Franz Ferdinand.
And it’s fucked up either way as it implies genocide.
my favorite part of WW2 is when they freed the concentration camps they also conducted a genocide and killed every white German…
that’s what you sound like
The second part is about freedom, not everyone who uses it (like i guess the girl in handcuffs) means to say this freedom equals getting rid of the other group entirely. Personally i wouldn’t use it because i feel it got tainted and you can’t predict how someone will interpret it. But it doesn’t have to imply genocide and can be used as a synonym to saying Free Palestine. Remember Israel banned the Palestine flag and symbols etc, there was a real need for these kinds of synonyms. That being said, it is definitely also being used to call for genocide.
Human slop
Well that seems like prime territory for jury nullification. Does Australia have that option like the usa?
Jury nullification isn’t a “rule” that exists but is more the biproduct of a system. If your system of law has normal people judge you, they can’t be punished for their decision, and you can’t be tried multiple times for the same crime, then jury nullification exists. The jury simply chooses to ignore directions, makes the decision they think is best, and the court must uphold it
Jury trials are a triumph of democracy, and any attempt to take them from us should be harshly.put down.
I think it’s more of a byproduct than a pair of products.
A typo in your unnecessary correction? How deliciously ironic.
One that I immediately spotted and fixed? Not really.
20 minutes after posting and 9 minutes after my comment is immediate? Cool.
Now, now, children.
Come to bed dear. Let the children go fuck themselves.
The real irony is that it apparently didn’t go through when I first corrected it.
I take issue with the way this is being presented
She was cautioned, so no criminal conviction or anything, let alone two years in jail
To pretend that Australia is anything like the US is disingenuous. There are people who want everyone to give up protesting, framing things like this doesn’t help
I’m grateful to live in Australia (admittedly, I’m not fond of Queensland, where this article is from as it’s our version of Florida) rather than the hellscape that is 'Murica
She was arrested and charged, and took the option of accepting a formal caution, which requires that you don’t deny committing the offence. If she hadn’t taken that option, she’d still be facing charges (and gaol time).
The other guy who was arrested for speaking the words is still facing charges, so far as I know.
From the Guardian’s coverage, though, it seems likely his actions will be covered by the ‘reasonable excuse’ provisions of the law. It seems clear he said it in order to educate the crowd and make a political argument against the laws, and even to discourage the crowd from saying it:
“I’m not sure if everybody here [knows] the history of the different slogans that the government is trying to ban us from saying, so [in] the interests of education, I want to explain [it] to you,” he said at the protest.
He went on to deny that the phrase was terroristic or antisemitic, saying it was instead a call for freedom and dignity of the people between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea.
“So when we say, from the river to the sea, we are calling for the freedom of the people of Palestine,” he said.
He discouraged others from chanting the slogan.
Moments later, as protesters started to march, he was arrested.
Another idiot defending his country blindly on lemmy
Piss all the way off you fascist apologist!
Wut? Are you sure you read their comment correctly?
I’m no fan of what the police did,
But you go off. Maybe you’d like a try soap, or working on your reading comprehension
Try Soap? Is that some limey slang? I’m an american, I don’t speak foreigner. Except the espanish.
It’s obvious that you’re a yank
oi oi oi.
I wish one day I could drink as much nationalist kool aid as you to think Australia is a single entity or America is a single entity or any nation is a single entity woth a single set of values or a single set of ideals or a single set of principles.
This is called nationalism and is modern invention. You can choose to not participate but school is designed to make you believe you have more in common with the white guy a hundred kilometers away in a part of your nation you have never once visited than the indigenous person or the immigrant down the road. This is a lie.
You identify with the social norms of the dominant ethnic group of the land called Australia. Let me rewrite part of your comment:
“To pretend white people in Australia are anything like the white people in the US is disingenuous. There are white people who want to give up protesting, framing things like this doesn’t help”
Ah there we go. Now we can finally understand your position.
I am so sorry white people are feeling sad in those places. I promise you the white people in australia and the white people in america have tons in common.
Ok well all that is pretty racist but alright
Thanks for sharing, here is a bit of info for people who don’t want to leave lemmy/piefed.
“It’s important to remember this chant is in English and it doesn’t rhyme in Arabic, it is used in demonstrations in Western countries,” he [Nimer Sultany, a lecturer in law at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London] said. “The controversy has been fabricated to prevent solidarity in the West with the Palestinians.”
Pro-Israel observers, however, argue the slogan has a chilling effect. “To Jewish Israelis what this phrase says is that between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, there will be one entity, it will be called Palestine – there will be no Jewish state – and the status of Jews in whatever entity arises will be very unclear,” Yehudah Mirsky, a Jerusalem-based rabbi and professor of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University.
There should be no states based on ethnicity, which definitelly means no Jewish State, no White state, no Black state, no Muslim state and so on.
States having ethnic majorities, sure, state constitutionally giving more rights to those of specific ethnic groups than to others, that’s just Racism baked into the very Foundation of the State.
Those “Pro-Israel observers” are essentially saying that the idea that there would be no Fundationally Racist state that benefits them is unpleasant for them - that’s very much an open admission that they’re Racists.
Those who can’t understand how all this is a problem, just read that quote of what they said but replacing the words “Jews” and “Jewish” with “White”.
wait I thought that was the genocide slogan… if they are being arrested for it did I have it backwards?
TIL it was a initially freedom slogan from the Palestinians that was mocked and turned into an apartheid slogan by Israeli far-right politicians. So it’s complicated now and depends on context.
it is still a freedom slogan, no matter what genociders say about it.
I think you’ve got it right, and maybe there are some governments that have rules against advocating for genocide. Kinda wild.
Violent terrorist action maybe you should nsfw this.
cute girls wearing tops advocating against genocide is my favorite form of terrorism
