- You've heard the slogans. - Free, free Palestine.
- The chanting crowds - Israel go to hell.
- The passion in their voices. - We demand an end to the
colonization of Palestine. - But in some places, these
words can cost you your job and maybe even land you in jail. So why are these slogans so controversial and what do they really mean? Number one. - From the river to the
sea, Palestine will be free. - This is one of the oldest slogans in the pro-Palestinian movement, and one of the most common
chants at pro-Palestine protests today. Let's break it down,
starting with the first part, from the river to the sea. A bunch of videos have gone viral of pro-Israel activists
going up to protestors and asking them from
what river to what sea? - What's the river? - I forgot the river's name. - What's the sea?
- But the sea is the Red Sea. - I think it's the Black Sea and the river on the other side of Gaza. - From the mountains to the sea. - From the mountains to the sea. - A recent survey show
ed
that less than half of the college students who
support the use of this slogan know that it's referring
to the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. What's in between these two? The West Bank and Gaza, generally referred to as
the Palestinian territories. Oh, and the entirety
of the state of Israel, and with it, 8 million Jews. So all of this area will be free. Free how? Free from what? Free from racism, free from oppression. But what's the Arabic version
of the slogan written there? From w
ater to water,
Palestine will be Arab. And some versions of these chants actually replace the
word Arab with Muslim, which might be surprising until you understand the
origins of the slogan. It first popped up in the 1960s with the Palestine Liberation
Organization, or PLO, a militant group formed by Palestinians aimed at destroying Israel and replacing it with
the Palestinian state. What to do with the Jews living there? At best, second class citizens. At worst. The PLO's original vision
is not
just old history. In its rally toolkit, the
pro-Palestinian group, In Our Lifetime, recommends the use of the Arabic version to protestors, along with several other slogans, which brings us to number two. In Our Lifetime, is one of
the leading organizations promoting pro-Palestine
protests around the US. Their rally toolkit has a
bunch of recommended slogans that you can get the crowd
chanting on your college campus. Most of them are in English, a few are in Arabic with translations, and then t
here's this one
in Arabic, but no English. - Luckily, we have Google Translate and, "There is no God, but Allah, the martyr is the beloved of God. Say Allah and raise your voice, and we will free her, or we will die. With our soul and with our blood, we will redeem you, O Palestine." This chant is very heavy, and it reveals an underlying distinction between the two ideologies
that are at war in Gaza. One ideology glorifies death, sees death as holy, sacred,
and the loftiest goal, and don't get m
e wrong, I'm
not talking about Islam, but radical Jihadist versions of it. The other ideology in this
war is built on the foundation of a single imperative, choose life. I have put before you life
and death, blessing and curse. Choose life. For thousands of years,
Judaism stood as an anomaly in a world that sacrificed humans, whether to their gods or
to the gladiator pits. Sometimes it seems like nothing's changed. Number three - Free, free Palestine.
- Free, free Palestine. - Now, this one's ea
sy breezy. It's two words, you could throw it around, which makes it one of the most popular. You'll see it on dozens of signs, sometimes mixed in with other slogans. But when you ask what it means, you get a lot of different answers. So let's start with Palestine. While you might think it's
referring to the territory of the state of Palestine, the tricky thing is
that there's never been a state of Palestine. Historically, Palestine refers to Israel, the Palestinian Territories,
and their neighb
or, Jordan, where 50 to 60% of the
population is Palestinian. But Jordan isn't really on
board with that definition. For Palestinians, Palestine
refers to the land between the river and the sea, which includes the state of Israel. Unlike the last slogan, where "free" stands for Arab or Muslim, which means free of Jews, there is no popular Arabic
version of this slogan. Some say free is just a call for human rights for Palestinians. Others say it's a call for the end of the military occupation
of
the West Bank and the blockade of Gaza. But there's also some protestors who use it to mean the complete
end of the state of Israel and the establishment of a
Palestinian state in its place. There's really no way to know what someone means when
they're saying free Palestine. Chances are people chanting it, don't even know what it means themselves, which is probably what makes
it such a popular slogan. Number four. - [Protestors} Settlers,
settlers, go back home. - Palestine is our home.
- Okay,
so Palestine, yeah, we know. Settlers can refer to two things, Jews who built the
communities in the West Bank after Israel conquered
the territory in 1967, or settlers, as in colonialist settlers, which refers to the time
where European empires sent Europeans to faraway lands to build colonies to settle there. The colonies were used to
control the local resources, a process that involved marginalizing local indigenous populations. Now, this slogan is based on the idea that Jews in the holy lan
d are settlers or colonizers from Europe, their actual home. The slogan denies that Jews
have any historical ties to the land of Israel, and instead they stole the
land from Palestinians. But the reality is that there's
an ancient Jewish history in the land of Israel, and
there's a well-documented, consistent presence of Jews in the area dating back thousands of years. Now, this bond is not solely historical, it's also deeply embedded
in Jewish culture, literature, and religion. Jerusalem itself
is mentioned over 600 times in the Hebrew Bible, and it's a focal point in
daily and holiday prayers. The Jewish calendar, Jewish
traditions, and Jewish holidays are intimately tied to the
land's agricultural cycles, reflecting a profound bond with the ancient, ancestral homeland. A homeland that Jews have
been longing to return to since an actual group
of European colonizers kicked them out 2000 years ago, you may know them as the Roman Empire. But even putting all of that,
slogans that cast I
sraelis as white colonizers, ignore
the over 50% of Israeli Jews whose origins are not from Europe. And on top of all of that,
the great irony of this slogan is its similarity to the
most common slogan today among Israel supporters.
- Bring them home. Bring them home. - A chant demanding the
return of over 250 hostages taken during the October 7th Massacre, and the 134 that as of this recording, are still being held by Hamas in Gaza. Number five. - There is only one solution.
- Intifada revoluti
on. - Now, we're not gonna go
into the uncomfortable history of Jews and solutions. So what does Intifada mean? The symbol translation is uprising, but as we know, nothing in
this conflict is simple. More specifically, an Intifada refers to two events from the recent past, the First and Second Intifadas. The First Intifada was a wave
of violent demonstrations and attacks on Israeli
soldiers and civilians, with Palestinians carrying out attacks with Molotov cocktails and grenades. The Second Inti
fada was a
massive wave of shootings and suicide bombing attacks targeting Israeli soldiers and civilians. The attacks targeted
everything from cafes, to buses, to Passover Seders. Over 1000 Israelis and 5,000 Palestinians were killed in the Second Intifada. According to this slogan, the
only solution is an Intifada. There's no room for non-violence, no room for negotiation, no room for understanding or respect. The only solution is a violent revolution. Now, number six.
- We don't want no two s
tate. We want '48. - It's one of the few slogans that doesn't leave much
to the imagination. We don't want no two state is referring to the peace process, which envisions the Jewish state and an Arab state living side by side. We want '48 is referring to a time prior to the establishment
of the state of Israel in May of 1948. The slogan envisions a Middle East with no state of Israel whatsoever. It implies that returning to a time before the state of Israel would mean returning to a time when th
e state of Palestine existed. But if the protestors chanting the slogan actually went back to 1948, they wouldn't find a state of Palestine. They would find the British
Mandate of Palestine, a colonialist entity that the Jews of the
land fought to remove. And before the British, there
was no state of Palestine, there was an area known as Southern Syria, a province in the 400
year-old Ottoman Empire. In fact, if these protestors
continue to travel back in time in search of a longstanding
independ
ent state in this land, free from the
clutches of a larger empire, they're pretty much stuck going
all the way back 2000 years to the Kingdom of Judea, just before the Roman Empire colonized it, took it over and renamed it Palaestina.
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