According to the majority decision of Meta's Oversight Board, "from the river to the sea," is not necessarily an expression that encourages genocide or violence against Jews and Israel.
"Although it can be understood as a call that encourages antisemitism and the violent elimination of Israel and its inhabitants, and legitimizes these actions, it is often also used as a political call for solidarity, equal rights, and self-determination of the Palestinian people, and for ending the war in Gaza," the Board's decision states.
As a result of this, Meta will not broadly remove posts that include the phrase, as reported by Calcalist.
Not all Board members agreed with the decision: According to Board member Emi Palmor, the minority opinion was that the phrase should only be allowed in posts that explicitly clarified they do not express support for Hamas or violence against Israelis and Jews.
Since October 7, the phrase "from the river to the sea" has become common in anti-Israel demonstrations and posts. It is associated with support for Hamas and the terrible massacres the organization carried out that day and is considered a call for genocide against Israelis and Jews.
In examining the issue, the Oversight Board reviewed Meta's decision not to remove three Facebook posts mentioning the phrase.
The first: a comment posted to a Facebook video that included the hashtag #FromTheRiverToTheSea, along with tags like #DefundIsrael. The second case is an image of watermelon slices forming the phrase "from the river to the sea Palestine will be free" in English. The third case is a reshare of a post from a Canadian community organization page that, alongside the phrase, expresses support for the Palestinian people and condemns the "senseless massacre" committed against them and the "Zionist Israeli occupiers." In all three cases, users requested the removal of the posts, but the requests were rejected by the company's automated tools without human evaluation.
According to the Board's decision, Meta was correct in not removing the publications because they do not attack Jews or Israelis with calls for violence or exclusion. "The three examples contain contextual signals of identification with Palestinians," it states. "They do not violate the violence and incitement rules and do not violate Meta's Dangerous Organizations and Individuals policy as they do not contain threats of violence or other physical harm, and do not praise Hamas or its actions." However, according to knowledgeable sources, the Board deliberately chose seemingly simple and innocent posts while avoiding discussion of more complex publications.
The Board adds that the phrase itself cannot be interpreted as a call for violence against Jews or Israelis or as support for Hamas: "The fact that this terrorist group uses the same phrase with explicit intent and action of violent elimination does not make the phrase itself violent or hate speech, given the variety of people using the phrase in different ways. A blanket ban on content including the phrase, a default removal of such content, or even using it as a signal to trigger enforcement or review, would unacceptably impinge on protected political speech."
The Board's decision includes a detailed, but very biased, historical review of the use of the phrase, claiming that it was previously associated with Palestinian aspirations for self-determination and equal rights. In one of the more provocative parts of the review, the Board mentions that the phrase appears in Hamas's 2017 charter ("Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea"), but immediately afterward notes that it also appeared in the Likud platform in 1977 ("Between the sea and the Jordan there will be only Israeli sovereignty").
This is an infuriating comparison: Likud is an Israeli political party that, under its rule, returned Sinai to Egypt as part of a peace agreement, carried out the disengagement from the Gaza Strip, and effectively preserved the Oslo Accords. Hamas is a murderous terrorist organization that aspires to commit genocide against Israelis, and even tried to do so on October 7, and its statement "from the river to the sea" can only be interpreted as a State of Israel without Jews. Comparing them side by side, as if they were two sides of the same coin, and without noting in the same context the fundamental differences between Hamas and Likud, smells of ignorance at best and antisemitism at worst.
Not everyone on the Board agreed with the majority decision that the phrase itself does not constitute support for Hamas or the murder of Israelis and Jews, and therefore posts containing it should only be removed in cases where it appears alongside support for Hamas or violence against Israelis or Jews. "The minority opinion says that after October 7, because the phrase appears in Hamas's charter and there's an increase in its use, the requirement should be the opposite," Board member Emi Palmor told "Calcalist". "Only posts that clarify that the phrase is not said in support of Hamas, violence against Israel, or the October 7 massacres should be allowed, but only as part of a political statement that Palestinians have a right to a state."
Palmor also criticized Meta's information disclosure policy, which prevented the Board from having a fuller discussion of the contexts in which the phrase is used. "Meta only presented us with information about posts that remained on the network, so allegedly they are ones that don't violate its policy," she explained. "We have no information about violating posts that the company removed. We don't know, for example, if for every thousand posts where the phrase appears alone, there are another million where it appears alongside support for Hamas or the destruction of the State of Israel. Because then I could conclude that whoever just mentions the phrase is doing it as part of mass support for Hamas. Meta doesn't allow for a true understanding of the overall picture of the use of this phrase. When data isn't made accessible, how can one identify a causal connection or evidence for such a connection?"
Meta responded: "We welcome the Board's examination of our guidelines on this issue. While our policy was written with safety in mind, we know there are global challenges that require feedback from experts outside of Meta, including the Oversight Board."
* Calcalist contributed to this article.