Meta sides with anti-Israel activists, declares threat to Middle East democracy not really ‘hate speech’

A board assembled by Meta, Facebook’s parent company, has adopted the anti-Israel position that the slogan that long has threatened the very existence of the Middle East democracy, “from the river to the sea,” actually is not “hate speech.”

That means the call for the destruction of Israel is welcomed on the corporation’s software platforms, including Facebook.

The Meta board confirmed that the slogan expresses “solidary with Palestinians” but doesn’t necessarily call for violence “or exclusion,” even though that’s has been the express intent of the slogan for decades.

Meta said its advisory board found, “In upholding Meta’s decisions to keep up the content, the majority of the board notes the phrase has multiple meanings and is used by people in various ways and with different intentions.”

The report from Meta did admit that a “minority” on the board was concerned “that because the phrase appears in the 2017 Hamas charter and given the October 7 attacks, its use in a post should be presumed to constitute glorification of a designated entity, unless there are clear signals to the contrary.”

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It has been the Anti-Defamation league that has confirmed the phrase “inherently” calls for the elimination of Israel.

”It is fundamentally a call for a Palestinian state extending from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, territory that includes the state of Israel, which would mean the dismantling of the Jewish state. It is an antisemitic charge denying the Jewish right to self-determination, including through the removal of Jews from their ancestral homeland,” the organization has confirmed.

The anti-Israel activists at the Council on American-Islamic Relations praised the decision, and in the course of its statement redefined it.

The organization said it “welcomed a decision by Meta’s (Facebook’s parent company) oversight board that the use of the phrase ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,’ which some activists say they use to call for Israelis and Palestinians to live together in one state with equal rights, does not inherently constitute hate speech.”

Actually, for Israelis and Palestinians “to live together in one state with equal rights,” already is the status quo in Israel, which does not deprive residents of rights because of their beliefs.

The problem for Palestinians is that the Jewish nation, which features that level of equality, still exists.

CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper, in a prepared statement, said, “We appreciate Meta recognizing that the Jewish, Palestinian and other activists who sometimes use this phrase as their way of advocating for Israelis and Palestinians to live together in one state with equal rights are not engaging in hate speech.”

He charged that there is “genocide in Gaza,” apparently over Israel’s response to the terrorists of Hamas who invaded Israel from Gaza last Oct. 7 and butchered some 1,200 innocent civilians, often in horrific ways.

But even leftist sources on the web confirm that “from the river to the sea” is a political phrase referring to the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea that has been used since its creation to mean that region, including Israel, should consist of one state.

As far back as the 1960s, the Palestine Liberation Organization used it to call for a “state … that would replace Israel.”

The web explanation notes, “any pro-Palestinian activists consider it ‘a call for peace and equality’ after decades of Israeli military rule over Palestinians, while for many pro-Israeli activists it is seen as a call for the ‘destruction’ of Israel.”

Hamas terrorists used it in their 2017 charter, prompting critics to charge is calls for the “removal or extermination” of the Jewish population there.

Sources actually do not agree on the origin of the phrase, and some claim it stems from different wording that was used over the years. Some claims suggest it advocates for Palestinian freedom from Israel, Jordan and Egypt.

But in 1969 the PLO said the phrase called for “a single democratic secular state that would replace Israel.”

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