What are your thoughts on chanting "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free"? Is it too provocative or aggressive?

Black Lives Matter is too aggressive for libs. Literally just saying that lives matter is too much.

So why bother to temper it at all. If anyone says anything against the status quo libs will hand wring and pearl clutch so you may as well go big

The existence of Israel itself is far more provocative and aggressive than the protest chant against it.

No, in a practical sense there is nothing that is passive and submissive enough that it will be acceptable for those that view from the river to the sea as too provocative and too aggressive.

Centrists who hum and haw about this are disingenous, they oppose the sentiment itself, they feel that the idea of Palestinians in equal power to Israelis is threatening and would prefer a complete fantasy vision of a peaceful relationship of submission by the Palestinians to the Israelis.

not provocative enough

Death to America

Lib shit. Same garbage as When people were saying "Defund the police" needed to be watered down (when it was already a watered down version of Abolish The Police).

It's this notion that finding the prefect slogan will be the mechanism that affects change.

We must embrace our true nature and just have an entire wall of text that explores every nuance of the issue as our slogan.

Trying to craft a perfect slogan to appease the media and hand-wringing liberals is pointless. They don't want to come up with something better, they just want you to shut up.

It's less aggressive than the Zionist chant of "kill all Arabs."

It's no more provocative than This Land Is Your Land.

always got weird "manifest destiny" vibes from that song tbh
- I can see how, but it was a contemporaneous response to Kate Smith's "God Bless America", refuting the idea of manifest destiny - there's a verse about private property that is rarely included in recordings that makes it a lot more clear.
- The original Woody Guthrie version is a bit better, the one with the verses that are usually removed because they’re too critical of that manifest destiny myth. Pete Seeger was known for performing this one too
- The original version of the song was critical of private property and colonialism, to be fair.

No

not provocative and aggressive enough

What is aggressive or provocative about wishing a land be free for all peoples to live and prosper in equality?

I don't care. You have to realise that people who are claiming it's too provocative are completely cynical. They don't want you to find a less provocative slogan, they want you to shut up about palestinian rights

Great chant, say it every chance you get

Permanently Deleted

This is just liberal cringe shit like complaining about black lives matter

Not at all. Don't give libs an inch on this.

Any form of speaking out is too provocative and aggressive in the eyes of a liberal

no

next question

I think if your goal to to gain support from people who may have been propagandized on the topic into a completely pro-Israel stance from an early age, then it's not very productive. On the other hand if you focus on the atrocities, the human rights abuses, humanizing the victims, pointing out Israeli dehumanizing of the victims, and an accurate history of the conflict, as well as citing leftist Jewish and Israeli sources to bolster your position, then you have a much higher chance of actually moving individuals and groups towards a leftist position here.

It also never hurts to remind people that, like most major conflicts throughout recent global history, this too was the fault of the English.

it doesnt matter what your chant is the libs and zionists will claim it is antisemitic and attack you for it no matter what

https://twitter.com/eeberquist/status/1720932378158235788

it's less provocative than "death to Israel," which is frankly warranted.

The middle east has rivers?

The West Bank isn't a financial institution.
not sure if this is a bit
- There's zero rivers in Saudi Arabia now (the world's 12th-biggest country)

How about isreal isntreal

Pretty one-sided replies so far so let me just be Devil's Advocate / explain where I'm coming from.

I want to chant things that mean: "Free Palestine", "Stop the violence", "Freedom and Equality for all"

I don't want to chant things that mean: "Kill the Jews"

Do I want to chant "Abolish Israel"... well maybe, I mean it depends on what you replace it with.

"Palestine one and free from the river to the sea" sounds like it is a call for a single arab state and the elimination of Israel, which is bordering on chauvinism.

Or at least that's the other side of it I was interested in discussing.

The entirety of Israel exists on land stolen from the indigenous inhabitants of the region. This claim on land is enforced through extreme violence and disenfranchisement of said indigenous population, to the point of genocide. "From the river to the sea" means every last bit of stolen land must be restored to its rightful owners, and the illegitimate fascist apartheid state of Israel can only continue to exist by denying that restitution. The creation of a Palestinian state that respects the rights of all ethnicities and religious groups within its borders is the only acceptable solution, and the assertion that any Jews left in the region if Israel doesn't exist being hunted down and slaughtered is rooted in ahistorical, xenophobic attitudes. The Muslim world has a significantly better track record in how it's treated its Jewish minority than Europe or America ever did.

It's not a compromise. It's not a demand for genocide. It's a demand for justice. You don't chant "stop murdering like half of us maybe," that's fucking ridiculous.
- Hey there were like 6% of the population that were Jewish before the Zionist occupation began
There is no formulation that will be acceptable to them. You are wasting your time
- exactly. Never take advice from your enemy
To be fair, I’d say your replies are one-sided because you’re posting in a place where the majority are not too sympathetic to Israel’s existence
- States are bad, and explicitly genocidal settler colonial states are double-plus-bad.
Okay you seem genuine, so I'll bite. Actual antisemites don't try to hide their views. In 2015 CHUDs in Charlottesville took to the streets chanting "the Jews will not replace us." They made it very clear.

"From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" is self explanatory as well. Palestinians cannot be free so long as the state of Israel exists. That doesn't mean executing all Jews, it means ending the apartheid state that's been commiting genocide and stealing land for 70+ years. I don't have it in me to explain the whole conflict for you, but if you look at 1948, 1967, and even the 2000 Camp David accords you'll see that any sort of "compromise" with Israel leads to Palestinians losing their land and their lives.
- the Jews will not replace us.
  
  And this was one of the more appropriate (?) chants I heard. I don't know how to properly spoiler/cw so I won't post some of the other things they said, but full on nazi shit.
Good thing "From the river to the sea" doesn't mean anything close to a call to commit genocide against Jewish people. It's a call to liberate the land from a fascist theocratic settler-colonial ethnostate. As for what to replace it with, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine put forth a plan for a secular socialist government that would guarantee rights and freedom of religion to all.

Isn'treal apologists like to pretend "from the river to the sea" is a call for genocide because then they can pretend that people fighting for their liberation as Nazis. But it's just not true.
i think a good chant makes an implicit argument that shifts the conversation. Israel has made it clear for its entire history that it is incompatible with Palestinian dignity and freedom. This is not widely understood by Americans, who think peacetime is just and neutral, and that the conflict began either 1000 years ago over whose god is better, or last week when the New York Times said Hamas murdered thousands of innocents for no discernible reason.

"From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" makes the argument that all the land between those bounds is occupied territory, and that the occupation will fall. Given a belief in the narrative of a holy racewar, it is easily misinterpreted as exterminationist. A quick conversation can solve this: "why are you calling for the extermination of Jews?" "I'm not. That's not what that means. Why do you equate freedom with extermination?" Then you continue marching, because you are not interested in fighting the racewar. That's the terrain of the zionists.