What does "from the river to the sea " mean ? (user search)
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  What does "from the river to the sea " mean ? (search mode)
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Author Topic: What does "from the river to the sea " mean ?  (Read 975 times)
Dr. MB
MB
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Libyan Arab Jamahiriya



« on: November 08, 2023, 08:40:08 PM »

As much as "free Palestine" does. It's gonna depend on who you ask. Assigning everyone saying it a particular meaning, the person's narrow interpretation of the phrase, is ridiculous, especially when they've demonstrated their interpretation of it is very different than what the people accusing them think it means.
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Dr. MB
MB
Atlas Politician
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Posts: 15,906
Libyan Arab Jamahiriya



« Reply #1 on: November 08, 2023, 09:30:07 PM »

As much as "free Palestine" does. It's gonna depend on who you ask. Assigning everyone saying it a particular meaning, the person's narrow interpretation of the phrase, is ridiculous, especially when they've demonstrated their interpretation of it is very different than what the people accusing them think it means.

That's all fair and good, but you could say the same for "Make America Great Again" (or heck, even the 14 words). There comes a point where a slogan is too compromised for it to be effective at representing a worthwhile political project, and it actually brings together people who should not be working together. Supporters of a democratic one-state solution should not be marching hand in hand with ethnonationalists who think all Israelis should be thrown into the sea.
I'd argue that the phrasing has gone the opposite way of MAGA or the Confederate flag. Make America Great Again was used by a few different campaigns including Bill Clinton before it was coopted by Trump, transforming it from a vague phrase that wasn't really identifiable with any one candidate or movement to one with a very specific meaning. Donald Trump and his supporters are the only ones using MAGA these days.

Or the Confederate flag, which did have a more widely accepted "Southern pride" usage divorced from racism and was used in that context more widely until the last decade or two. Nowadays if you see someone flying a Confederate flag you can get a pretty good guess of where they stand but that wasn't the case, necessarily, in the past. And once it became more controversial, people who didn't want to be associated with racism stopped using it.

But From the River to the Sea started out as a phrase used by the PLO with a meaning closer to what people are accusing it of being these days (although not entirely accurate), that gradually branched out and became used by people of all stripes who support Palestine, including support for a binational state. I don't think the slogan is particularly useful especially given how divisive it is, and it distracts from the real issues at hand, but it's not going away and painting everyone or even a majority of people who use it as genocidal/antisemitic/wanting ethnic cleansing is a troubling and demonstrably false take that's meant to delegitimize opposition to Israel's invasion/bombing of Gaza and U.S. support for it, and Israel/Israeli policy in general.
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Dr. MB
MB
Atlas Politician
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*****
Posts: 15,906
Libyan Arab Jamahiriya



« Reply #2 on: November 10, 2023, 03:14:55 AM »

Here’s a good and nuanced article from the NYTimes: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/09/us/politics/river-to-the-sea-israel-gaza-palestinians.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
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