Stop Misinterpreting The ‘From The River To The Sea’ Call For Genocide As A Call For Genocide

by Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI)

Washington, December 3 – A few days ago I felt compelled to remove a message I reposted from elsewhere on Twitter, a message that contained the oft-repeated slogan of Palestinian national liberation, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free.” I decided to undo the retweet because, I belatedly understood, too many people would choose to distort the meaning of that aspiration for rendering the Jews and their welfare once again at the mercy of outside powers as an aspiration to render the Jews and their welfare once again at the mercy of outside powers.

Of course, once tweeted, even if untweeted, content on the internet can never truly be removed, all the more so when that content comes from or through a public figure; screen captures and other techniques ensured that my deletion of the post did an incomplete job of undoing it, and my political opponents proved all too ready to  exploit my error for their own propaganda purposes. They now argue that a call to place Jewish survival in the hands of a culture that allied itself, under Mufti Husseini, with Hitler’s genocidal regime, betrays a desire to pursue a genocidal agenda. How many attacks against Jews and Jewish interests will it take to convince the public otherwise? I shudder to consider the answer.

This hardly represents the first time the noble goals of Palestinian liberation, of freeing historic Palestine from the villainous Zionist usurper rapist descendants of apes and swine, has been miscast as driven by animus for Jews or their sovereignty. Palestinians have no objections to Jewish sovereignty; only to Jewish sovereignty that in any way attenuates the contingent, vulnerable status Jews have always held in Muslim society. Stop trying to twist that principle into something antisemitic.

My opponents will never truly be satisfied with these explanations, a fact that merely demonstrates the lack of good faith behind their position. When a pro-Palestine activist finds himself or herself restricted from intimidating Jewish students into silence over the actions of a group of Jews on a different continent, that carries disturbing implications for freedom of speech. When Islamic charities face criminal charges for raising funds for Hamas and other Palestinian liberation groups, that carries disturbing implications for freedom of religion – all because propagandists insist on misinterpreting the Palestinian call to facilitate genocide as a Palestinian call to facilitate genocide. And that must stop.

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