FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA, PALESTINE WILL BE FREE

From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.' is a rallying call for the liberation of the Palestinian people. But some people are opposed to that.

WHILE IN opposition ACT leader David Seymour was able to mine a rich vein of political capital by defending people's right to free speech. But he hasn't even been appointed to his new job in the National-led coalition government and he's already raising objections to people saying things he doesn't like. What a difference a change in government makes.

We know that far right Zionists like Juliet Moses of the New Zealand Jewish Council and David Cumin of the Israel Institute of New Zealand have difficulties in supporting a liberal democracy like New Zealand's, but Seymour should know better. In frothing at the mouth over something Green MP Chloe Swarbrick has said, he has forgotten something as rudimentary as the Voltarean principle of 'I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,'. Indeed we are left with the distinct impression that Seymour would just like Chloe Swarbrick to shut up about Israel and Gaza.

At Saturday's Auckland rally calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, Swarbrick chanted  'From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free'. You might have seen the video on social media or on Three News. In response Seymour has posted on X: 'From river to the sea' appears in Hamas' 2017 constitution. Some people believes it means no Israel and no Jewish people. Why aren't the media asking what she meant'?

Yes, some people claim that the chant demands the annihilation of Israel and even the Jewish people. Zionists like Juliet Moses and David Cumin claim that for instance. And, like Seymour, they have seized on what they regard as another opportunity to smear the growing anti-war protest movement as anti-semitic. As the death toll in Gaza has mounted,  Moses and Cumin have largely stopped pretending that Israel is just 'defending itself'. Now they seek only to delegitimise the anti-war movement in the eyes of the general populace.

Unfortunately the media keeps going to people like Juliet Moses for comment as if she represents the views of the local Jewish community. She doesn't. Many Jewish folk find her views repugnant and they are opposed to Israel's war on Gaza. Indeed many Jewish folk protested on Saturday, which presumably makes then anti-semitic as well. How does that work exactly? Do I have to tell some of my friends that they actually hate themselves?

Juliet Moses, using remarkably similar language to that of David Seymour, has demanded that Chloe Swarbrick explain herself. But Swarbrick doesn't owe her political opponents any explanation. The phrase 'From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free'  has, for Palestinians. been a rallying call for decades. The slogan points to how Palestinians are 'a people in exile' and have a right to return to their land  - something spelled out in United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194. 

While conservative politicians like David Seymour and Zionists like Moses and Cumin would like to define it as a vow to annihilate Israel, it is a legitimate demand for Palestinians to have equal rights, denied to them for the past seventy-five years. The American anti-Zionist group Jewish Voices for Peace puts it this way; ' It is a call for the liberation of Palestinian people in a space where Palestinian lives are devalued, where Palestinians are dehumanized, where there is the denial of rights and freedom of movement and basic human needs.'

United States congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez agrees: 'From the river to the sea is an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate.'