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.
Does Meta listen to their oversight body historically?
Yes. It allows then to avoid ultimate responsibility for moderation policy decisions.
I worry that phrase is a little too generic. If it were bannable, I could see kayakers getting in trouble
“Off for a day trip! Gonna float all the way from the river to the sea today!”
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.
This is an extremely false equivalence, since palestinians are native to palestine and zionists are mostly european (and african, asian, etc. anywhere that kids can be brainwashed) invaders. It’s a call for palestinian freedom/return but it’s a genocidal slogan for zionists.
It’s not though is it? “From the river to the sea” is referring to a Palestinian territory spanning from the Mediterranean to the Jordan. It’s referring to establishing a state over that area the exact same way Jews use it. The question meta weighed up was not “what are state actors doing”. Because if they had done so and had decided the saying was explicitly support for Hamas then they would have banned it, because Hamas is a proscribed terrorist organisation according to the US.
Instead they explain they just because an individual says it, then the reader cannot infer the support of a state level group like Hamas. Nor is the saying in itself an encouragement to hurt Jewish people.
But this also means of a Jewish individual says it then the reader cannot infer support of the action of a state level group like the Israeli government. Nor can it be taken in itself to be an explicit encouragement to violence against Palestinians.
Cake and eat it etc.
(Also, since it came up, over 70% of Jews in Israel were born in Israel. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israelis. I assume you’re not the kind of person to say “but where are you really from?”)
The slogan From the River to the Sea is about Palestinian liberation that started in the 60s by the PLO for a democratic secular state, not Genocide. The Syrian leader Hafez al-Assad in 1966 maybe, but he’s not Palestinian.
Additionally, Netanyahu has explicitly said “between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.”
That phrase is often used by both sides of the conflict, maybe that’s why it wasn’t banned, can’t offend zionists can we?
In this single instance, this tiny success appears to be to the benefit of who that phrase is more associated with. Lets not look a gift horse in the mouth
It’s because it’s a shade too dogwhistley.
It doesn’t say HOW you clear out that land, maybe you ask them to leave politely, maybe you buy them flowers and take them out for a romantic weekend in Paris then cancel the return flight.
It’s just too vague to clearly say “slowly strangle them economically while terrorizing them and bulldozing their land out from under them”.
Hamas’s death to Israel is less subtle in comparison, although it could be construed as a disapproval of the New Zealand All Blacks especially their outside back Israel Dagg. It could even be a contempt of modern existentialist dogma through the painful reminder that, "Death to ‘is real!’
Ain’t that phrase used in Israel founding documents?
Yeahhh, suuure.
We all know what they mean, the Palestinian government has vowed to exterminate Israel after all.
Ever notice how apologists for Zionism are all terrified at what would happen if Palestinians had authority and power because they assume Palestinians will be as brutal and criminal as the Zionists?
What if they caused Israelis to become refugees? What if they did terror attacks to convince Israelis to leave? What if they passed racist laws that discriminated where a Jew could work, live, and move? Maybe they’ll subjugate Israel’s people to military justice and deny them rights and citizenship?
Yea, all of that would be horrible and fucking wrong and I would support an embargo on weapons to this hypothetical Palestinian government.
I mean, they’ve either done or attempted most of that list, especially the terror attacks.
That’s why this whole thing is such a shitshow, everyone involved is awful.
