River Jordan
 River Jordan(River)    | |
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 “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” | |
The River Jordan or Jordan River is a 251-kilometre-long (156 mi) river in the Middle East that flows roughly north to south through the Sea of Galilee and on to the Dead Sea. Jordan and the Golan Heights border the river to the east, while Palestine's West Bank and Israel lie to its west. Both Jordan and the West Bank take their names from the river.[1]
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Promised Land
The Jordan River holds major significance in Judaism and Christianity. According to the Bible, the Israelites crossed it into the Promised Land and Jesus of Nazareth was baptised by John the Baptist in it.[2]
“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”
For Palestinians, the phrase has been a rallying call for decades, signifying what they believe is their right to peacefully return to the land that is now Israel. About 700,000 Palestinians — approximately 85% of the Arab population — were expelled or forced to flee in 1948, when Israel declared independence after the United Nations voted to divide Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. In the 1967 war, Israel expanded the territory under its control and has since occupied the Gaza Strip and West Bank. It has blockaded Gaza since 2007, after Hamas took control of the strip.
October 2023 Gaza−Israel conflict
But the phrase has been the subject of global controversy, with some seeing it as antisemitic or even dangerous, especially after it was adopted by Hamas. The Palestinian militant group attacked Israeli towns on 7 October 2023, the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, sparking the current war with Israel that has taken more than 1,400 Israeli lives and more than 9,000 Palestinian lives.
Soon after, a planned pro-Palestinian protest in Vienna was banned after the slogan was mentioned in publicity material. British Home Secretary Suella Braverman recently called the slogan a “staple of antisemitic discourse.”
The dispute over the phrase, said Wendy Pearlman, a professor of Middle East studies at Northwestern University, is a microcosm of the entire Israeli-Palestinian dispute.
- “It is a conflict of two peoples who both view this land as their historic homeland,” she said.
The phrase has been in use since the 1960s by the Palestine Liberation Organisation, according to Jessica Winegar, a sociocultural anthropologist at Northwestern University who studies political protest and the Middle East. It called for a restoration of the land where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians lived, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, before they left or were forced to leave with the establishment of Israel in 1948, Winegar said. Over the years, Palestinians wanted to reverse the establishment of the state of Israel so they could return to their homes.
- “So, for them, the idea of ‘from the river to the sea’ and doing away with the state of Israel was not really a radical idea even though it might seem that way to us. As Palestinian refugees sought homes elsewhere, the phrase took root overseas and became widely used in pro-Palestinian protests in the past three decades," Winegar said.
Hatem Abudayyeh, chair of the Chicago-based United States Palestinian Community Network and the child of Palestinian immigrants, said the slogan points to how Palestinians are “a people in exile” and have a right to return to the land — something spelled out in United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194.
To Deanna Othman, who has taken part in some of the pro-Palestinian protests in downtown Chicago, the chant means “that Palestinians are seeking their freedom in their homeland.” She is aware that others have interpreted the chant in a negative light, but she disagrees.
- “It’s a call demanding for Palestinians to have equal rights,” said Othman, who lives in Oak Lawn. “It doesn’t mean anything more than that.”
While the phrase has been a source of solidarity for Palestinians for decades, it’s been seen by others as more divisive — particularly after its adoption by Hamas after the group was formed in the late 1980s, vowing to destroy Israel. Jay Tcath, executive vice president of the Jewish United Fund, called the slogan not only antisemitic but eliminationist, saying it implicitly calls for the “end of any Jewish presence in our historic homeland.”
- “All too many Palestinians, there and here, embrace the eliminationist interpretation of that phrase, which is: ‘From the river to the sea’ doesn’t mean one state for two people. It means a Palestine without any Jews left living there. And either it will be accomplished by expulsion or murder,” Tcath said.
The Isratine solution
Hatem Abudayyeh, who is also a spokesperson for Chicago Coalition for Justice in Palestine, which has organised pro-Palestinian marches in Chicago, rejected the notion that the slogan calls for violence towards Jews.
“If there are fringe elements — one in a thousand, you know, one in a million — who say that, they’re not significant in our community and in our society,” he said. What Abudayyeh and many progressive Palestinians want, he said, is one secular, democratic state that “includes all the people that live from the river to the sea” — Palestinians and Jews alike — to replace Israel, which they and human rights groups say is guilty of apartheid.
Hamas, though, might have a different goal, said former US diplomat Cécile Shea, who previously served as a political policy officer in Tel Aviv. “When Hamas talks about a Palestinian state from the river to the sea, they’re talking about an Islamic state,” Shea said. “They’re not talking about a secular Palestinian state.”
Abudayyeh isn’t worried about driving potential supporters away. “I believe the majority of the people who support the Palestinian cause have no problem with the slogan,” he said. “All it means is that you are against colonisation and that you are in support of self-determination and freedom and independence and justice.”[3]
Labour MP suspended
In October 2023, Andy McDonald was suspended as a Labour MP, after the Labour Party said he had made "deeply offensive" comments relating to the Israel-Gaza war. In his speech at a pro-Palestinian rally in London on 28 October 2023, Andy McDonald said:
- "We will not rest until we have justice. Until all people, Israelis and Palestinians, between the river and the sea, can live in peaceful liberty."
A Labour Party spokesperson said those comments "were deeply offensive, particularly at a time of rising antisemitism which has left Jewish people fearful for their safety. The chief whip has suspended the Labour whip from Andy McDonald, pending an investigation."
Andy McDonald's suspension followed days of internal Labour tensions over the party's position on the Israel-Gaza war. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer refused to call for a ceasefire, instead backing "humanitarian pauses" to help aid reach Gaza. In stopping short of backing a full ceasefire, the Labour leader is aligned with the UK government, as well as the US and EU.
But dozens of Labour councillors, and senior figures including mayors Sadiq Khan and Andy Burnham, Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar, and some frontbenchers, have called for a formal ceasefire.
Earlier in October, Home Secretary Suella Braverman urged police chiefs to consider interpreting the chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” as an "expression of a violent desire to see Israel erased from the world". Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's spokesman has said the phrase is "a deeply offensive chant to many."
Former shadow chancellor John McDonnell said the suspension was "unjust" and "absolutely nonsensical". "He turned a slogan some are concerned about into a peace plea," McDonnell added.
Momentum, a left-wing Labour campaign group, branded McDonald's suspension "an appalling and opportunistic attempt from the Starmer leadership to silence those speaking out in solidarity with Palestine".
The Labour Muslim Network described the suspension as "obscene and deeply offensive". "The fundamental right to live in peace, with liberty and self determination is one which should be applied to all peoples," the group said in a statement. "The only conclusion that can be drawn is that those who have made this decision do not see Palestinian and Muslim life as deserving of this fundamental principle."
Andy McDonald said he was "saddened" by his suspension and believed it would be overturned after he explained his views to the party's investigation. In a statement, he said there had been "a number of misrepresentations of my words in the media", which had "furthered baseless and extremely harmful accusations against me". McDonald added that his words
"should not be construed in any other way than they were intended, namely as a heartfelt plea for an end to the killings in Israel, Gaza, and the occupied West Bank, and for all peoples in the region to live in freedom without the threat of violence".[4]
References
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