The Debate on “From the River to the Sea” Exposes the Hypocrisy of Wokeness

For the past month, ever since the terrorist group Hamas unleashed a barbaric attack on the State of Israel, debates have been raging in the press, on college campuses, even in the U.S. Congress, about whether the phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” should or should not always be considered a call for the extermination of Israel and the murder of all the Jews who live there—in other words, the way Hamas uses it.

The fact that we are even debating this question at all is entirely antisemitic.

Regardless of what the phrase from the river to the sea did or could mean, to various different groups at various different times, at this point it is clear that it is, at the very least, also a slogan of the U.S. designated terrorist group Hamas, and that the terrorist group and its supporters use the phrase as a genocidal call to antisemitic violence. If there was any other chant that was readily understood by many to be calling for the wholesale slaughter of any other minority group, would anyone in their right mind have the audacity to say it is fine to use as long as that is not how it was intended? Dream on.

Antisemites like Rep. Rashida Tlaib claim that when they use the phrase, they have their own special, well-thought-out interpretation: After she was censured by Congress, Tlaib tweeted that “From the river to the sea is an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate.” Which begs the question: If that was actually true, and that is what she meant, then why not just say that? Even if she was, absurdly, just calling for Israel to peacefully coexist with an entity that openly wants to kill every man, woman and child of Jewish descent, why would she do so using a phrase that can also clearly be understood as a call for Jewish genocide?

Tlaib and her Squad friends are very quick to label what they consider anti-Muslim or anti-black “dog-whistles” when they hear them, and to pretend that every legitimate criticism of their behavior is somehow really racist or sexist, but they have no problem making use of a phrase that clearly also means, and has long meant, “let’s kill all the Jews.”

Even if we assume that the people who are chanting the Hamas-used phrase—and who are chanting it while Israel is fighting a war against Hamas—do not “intend” to use it the way that Hamas does, and even ignoring the fact that at least some of them, like Students for Justice in Palestine, openly do intend it that way, out of curiosity, how many of the pundits and “scholars” defending its use thought it was alright, at the height of the #MeToo movement, for powerful men to make arguably sexist comments if they didn’t intend for them to be considered sexist, or if taken out of context there might be other, less offensive, interpretations of their words? That’s right, no one.

It is especially telling to see self-righteous hypocrites like Ibram X. Kendi, author of “How to Be An Antiracist,” repost videos defending Tlaib and the use of that phrase. Kendi once wrote that “What makes a term racist is rarely the term’s literal meaning, and almost always the historical and political context in which the term is being used.” He wrote that to explain why such innocuous-sounding phrases like “legal vote” or “personal responsibility” are functionally racist and should always be avoided. I wonder how Kendi would feel if there was a phrase that had been adopted by say, the KKK, and that the vast majority of black people understood to be a racist call for their genocide? One has to assume he would not defend its use at rallies, especially if the “historical and political context” of said use was the immediate aftermath of a terrorist attack by the vey group that had made it its slogan.

Of course, Tlaib’s use of the phrase is not really that surprising. She is a rabid antisemite who still has an actual blood libel posted on her public social media. Kendi’s defense is similarly unsurprising. Last week Kendi also posted support for Ahed Tamimi, a Palestinian “activist” who was detained for inciting violence when, in the wake of the Hamas attacks, she posted the message “Come on settlers, we will slaughter you. What Hitler did to you was a joke. We will drink your blood and eat your skulls. We are waiting for you.” Kendi is what might best be described as “anti-racist for thee, but not for me.”

The bottom line is that there are countless words and phrases and idioms that at any one point may have been innocuous, but have developed clear and well-known offensive or unacceptable connotations. In our current society, we have taken this idea to the extreme, with universities adopting micro-aggression-and-bias-free language guides, and ensuring that faculty learn each student’s pronouns to make sure that no one is excluded even accidentally, intentions be damned. That’s all well and good, as long as we are consistent. But it is difficult to accept that these same faculty members have no problem with students claiming they are expressing a “political idea”—even taking that claim at face value—in terms that are also readily understood to be antisemitic and genocidal.

The bottom line is that there are countless words and phrases and idioms that at any one point may have been innocuous, but have developed clear and well-known offensive or unacceptable connotations.

And so I ask again: If there was a chant that was accepted by many to be calling for the wholesale slaughter of any other minority group, would anyone have the audacity to say it is fine as long as that is not how it was intended?

Of course not. That is a classic antisemitic double-standard, and anyone who pretends it isn’t is lying.

Dr. Mark Goldfeder is Director of the National Jewish Advocacy Center.