Comment on An 18-year-old woman in Queensland faces two years in jail for wearing a shirt that says "from the river to the sea."

• crapwittyname@feddit.uk ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  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 either 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 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.

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  • JasSmith@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    The phrase was created with the explicit intent to destroy Israel. We can equivocate about the intent to destroy Israel as being genocidal, but as I explain, Palestinian activists consider it genocidal intent when Israeli politicians talk of destroying Palestine, so I use their own standard. It may be that people who use this phrase do not intend destruction of Israel, but they are using a phrase which was created explicitly to call for the destruction of Israel. I don’t accept that there is any good faith way to claim the term has been “reclaimed.” If I say “heil Hitler,” and follow it up with “but no genocide or any of the bad stuff Hitler did,” it doesn’t erase the first part of my sentence. In fact, the second part is antithetical to the first.

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    • crapwittyname@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      And the phrase “bless you” was created with the intent to banish demons out of your nose, but we still say it.

      “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, is what they chant. Calling that genocidal is Orwellian mate. Get a grip.

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      • JasSmith@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        And the phrase “bless you” was created with the intent to banish demons out of your nose, but we still say it when you sneeze.

        Bad example. The intent was good and it remains good.

        “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, is what they chant. Calling that genocidal is Orwellian, mate. Get a grip.

        Many do not. Many drop the second part entirely. For example, the t-shirt on the girl in this very video that we are discussing. Either way, adding a nice phrase to the end of a genocidal phrase doesn’t make the genocide part less bad.

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    • toad@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Yea Israel is genociding the palestinians, not the other way around. Quit being a negationist

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  • FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    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.

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    • crapwittyname@feddit.uk ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      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?

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      • FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        whereby “from the river to the sea” is not.

        It is though. They might not think they’re extremists, but they are.

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• veleth@lemmy.wtf ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  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.

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  • JasSmith@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    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.

    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.

    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?

    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.

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    • veleth@lemmy.wtf ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Thanks for your perspective

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      • JasSmith@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        And yours.

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    • toad@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      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

      Except one state is the colonist and the other is getting genocided. How does it feel twosiding a genocide

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      • JasSmith@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        I’m referring to Hamas’ “one state” solutions they have proposed.

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