The ‘Anti-Semitism’ Canard
Back in early November, with Israel’s genocide in Gaza having been underway for several weeks, Rashida Tlaib, a Democratic member of the US House of Representatives from Michigan, called for an end to Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people and shared a video on Twitter objecting to President Joe Biden claiming to speak for all Americans in saying, “We stand with Israel.”
The video showed images of Gaza being bombarded; bloody injured and dead Palestinians; and protestors in the US calling for a ceasefire, an end to Israel’s 56-year occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, an end to Israel’s 17-year illegal blockade of Gaza. “Free! Free Palestine!” protestors chanted at one rally. At other events, protestors were heard chanting “from the river to the sea”.
That chant derives from the phrase “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, which since the First Intifada that erupted in December 1987 has been a popular rallying call among Palestinians demanding an end to Israel’s occupation and apartheid regime, which encompasses all of the land of the former territory of Palestine, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
Tlaib appeared in the video condemning the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s military assault on Gaza. Near the end of the video, after a clip of administration spokesperson John Kirby expressing the White House’s view that the death of innocent civilians was a tragic but acceptable outcome, Tlaib was shown looking at the camera to say, “We will remember.” Following that, the video displayed the text “JOE BIDEN SUPPORTED THE GENOCIDE OF THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE”.
In a separate Twitter post, Tlaib explained, “From the river to the sea is an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate.”
The Israeli embassy in the US posted a reply that said, “No verbal acrobatics can hide the true meaning behind this slogan – namely – the obliteration of the State of @Israel. Hamas’ charter clearly states ‘Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the River to the Sea.’”
Clearly, the government of Israel objects to the idea of the Palestinian people being liberated from its criminal oppression.
Just as evidently, so do most members of the US Congress. After Tlaib posted the video, the House of Representatives passed a resolution censuring her for embracing “a genocidal call to violence to destroy the state of Israel and its people”.
Last week, the House went even further in its opposition to freedom and equality for the Palestinians by passing a resolution condemning the slogan as “an antisemitic call to arms with the goal of the eradication of the State of Israel”, a phrase that “seeks to deny Jewish people the right to self-determination and calls for the removal of the Jewish people from their ancestral homeland”.
The resolution cited the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which maintains that those who use the “antisemitic” slogan “seek Israel’s destruction through violent means”, and the American Jewish Committee (AJC), which likewise describes it as an “antisemitic” slogan used as a “rallying cry for terrorist groups and their sympathizers”.
A week ago, ZeroHedge and Breaking Points co-hosted a debate on whether Israel’s military assault on Gaza is justified, with Dave Smith and Cenk Uygur arguing the negative and Dennis Prager and Batya Ungar-Sargon arguing the affirmative. The question was put to both sides during the debate of whether the phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is anti-Semitic.
Ungar-Sargon, a deputy opinion editor for Newsweek, replied that she has friends who support Palestinians’ rights who tell her that when they use the phrase, they just mean that they want there to be freedom for all.
“But it is a line from Hamas’s charter,” she continued, “and so I think the burden of proof is on the people chanting it that they don’t mean it in an eliminationist way that would wreak havoc and violence on Jews because, like I said, it’s part of the charter.”
She further stated that she wouldn’t comment on whether it’s anti-Semitic, despite having just essentially argued that we must automatically assume the anyone who uses the phrase is advocating violence against Jews.
In fact, there is no iteration of the phrase “from the river to the sea” in Hamas’s 1988 Charter. But we’ll come back to that.