The decision by Meta’s Oversight Board on Wednesday to allow the phrase “From the river to the sea” to run on its platform by users without automatic removal is not only antisemitic; it is senseless and dangerous in its undermining of the legitimacy of the Jewish state. It is a stick in the mud for the goal of true, deep dialogue.
The Oversight Board is a Meta-funded panel made up of experts and lawyers who oversee content moderation for Facebook and Instagram. It operates independently but is funded by the US social media firm.
It ruled that the phrase can continue to be used as an expression of solidarity with Palestinians as long as it’s not accompanied by calls for violence, praise for dangerous organizations, or what company policy considers hate speech. It also said that the phrase has several meanings, and as such its use cannot in itself be deemed to be harmful, violent, or discriminatory.
Restricting a genocidal cry that calls for the erasure of the Jewish state, with its millions of Jews, as well as the erasure of Jewish history, is not actually a restriction.
The history of this area, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, is fraught, complicated, layered, and bloody. The narrative war is just as real as the physical one occurring right now in the Gaza Strip, the North, and the West Bank, as Israel fights for security within its sovereign borders.
There are a myriad ways to support Palestinians right now in their pain, physical as well as virtual. But, in the social media online vacuum through which anyone who isn’t physically in Israel or Gaza is consuming the war, words matter most. This is because with distance comes a fundamental and indispensable lack of clarity, context, and closeness to the real thing.
In its absence, a vacuum is born, which for 11 months now has been filled with unchecked calls for the erasure of Israel and illegitimacy of the Jewish state – even to exist, let alone defend itself. The ability to disagree on how that defense should be carried out is a far cry from undermining the premise that it has a right to exist.
“From the river to the sea” does exactly that, implicitly calling for Israel’s destruction, as The Jerusalem Post’s Diaspora Correspondent Michael Starr pointed out in April in the context of the phrase used widely in university protests. The phrase does exactly that, and it is doing so dressed as a solidarity cry. It is up to the managers of these virtual spaces to keep that in check; this decision does the opposite.
According to the Oversight Board, Facebook saw a 50-fold increase in the use of the phrase in the six months following the war’s outbreak. This phenomenon affects people’s behavior and has real-world consequences for Jews.
Responses to the decision
The Anti-Defamation League rightly said in response, “Usage of this phrase has the effect of making members of the Jewish and pro-Israel community feel unsafe and ostracized. There are many ways to advocate for Palestinian justice and rights, including a Palestinian State, without resorting to using this hateful phrase, which denies the right of the State of Israel to exist.”
Another group, the Combat Antisemitism Movement, decried the short-sightedness of the decision as well, calling the phrase a “violent call to genocide.” It was one of the 2,400 groups and individuals asked to weigh in when the Oversight Board solicited input about the issue in May.
A minority opinion dissenting from the decision noted that the phrase appears in the 2017 charter of Hamas, which Meta has designated as a dangerous organization. The minority believed that the content moderators should default to presuming the slogan represents a “glorification of Hamas, a designated organization, and be removed unless it is clear the content using the phrase does not endorse Hamas and its aims.”
“Context is crucial,” Oversight Board co-chair Pamela San Martin said. “Simply removing political speech is not a solution. There needs to be room for debate, especially during times of crisis and conflict.”
The phrase stands hand-in-hand with Hamas’s goal to destroy Israel. The Board’s decision contributes nothing to the true dialogue that should be taking place around the issue, threatens the safety of Jews, and should be revoked.
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