this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2026
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The fuck?
I don't understand all of the connotations of the phrase, (I doubt queensland parliamentarians do either). I do understand palestinians ancestral land is bordered by the river and the sea.
That said, this sounds very much like making wrong think a crime. Nobody is allowed to acknowledge that Israel used to be Palestine because that would upset the Israelis.
In Australia in the last decade there has been a movement towards recognising first australians as the traditional owners of the land on which we live and work. It's often mentioned in podcasts, emails, public announcements et cetera. More and more signage has both European and Aboriginal place names.
The term "truth telling" has emerged to describe the practice of acknowledging historical facts rather than pretending they didn't happen.
If a group of indigenous Australians chanted "from the desert to the sea", would that be hate speech ?
It never existed as a state. It was "The British Mandate of Palestine".
Am not saying it shouldn't exist as a state in future, just being pedantic with the history.
Jordan is effectively a Palestinian state.
Palestine As A Name Commonly Used Throughout Ancient History
From Philistia To Provincia ‘Syria Palaestina’ (135 AD‒390 AD)
Careful there, mate... ~/s~
No, I'm not going to apologize for supporting emancipation
Nah just reflecting on the absurdity that the mere mention of river and sea may be criminalised by the Queensland government soon.
It wasn't a self-governing state was my point.
Again, wrong. Maybe do so reading.
Unless you mean state as in nationalism, wasn't a thing until the 19th century. Where Palestine was self-governing under the ottoman empire until British occupation began.
From the Introduction
Conventional wisdoms are often articulated by powerful elites; they are not always based on facts. The conventional wisdom is that Palestine never in its history experienced self-government, political or cultural autonomy, not to mention practical sovereignty and actual statehood. Nothing is further from the truth. As we shall amply demonstrate in this work, over three millennia from the late Bronze Age and until the establishment of the Israeli state in 1948, Palestine enjoyed a great deal of social, political and economic autonomy and also experienced statehood through six distinct, though not mutually exclusive, ways – ways which had a profound impact on the evolution of the ideas of Palestine across the millennia:
• Autonomous economic and monetary systems and the issuing of Palestinian currency: the institution of independent monetary policies and the minting of distinct Palestinian currency were evident in the cases of the coinage of Philistia or Philisto-Arabian in the 6th‒4th centuries BC (discussed in chapter one) and the minting of Arab currency ‘in Filastin’ throughout early Islam (discussed in chapter six).
• Imperial patron‒protégé systems: the construction of patron‒client systems and the rise of local and autonomous regional and urban elites in Palestine, as was in the case of the ‘urban notables’ of Ottoman Palestine. But ultimately, as we shall see in chapter eight, these Ottoman urban elites in Palestine were rule-takers not rule-makers and rule-breakers.
• Administrative, provincial and military autonomy: this is evident throughout the Roman and Byzantine periods in what became widely known as Provincia Palaestina or the Dux Palaestinae, the ‘military commander of Palestine’ (discussed in chapter four), Mutawalli Harb Filastin (“ ”, Military Governor of Palestine) (discussed in chapter six) and in late Ottoman period Palestine with the creation of the autonomous administrative Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem as the key province of Palestine (discussed in chapter nine).
• Palestinian client states: the emergence and creation of several Palestinian client states, partly based on the same patron‒client relationships. Although the types of client states in Palestine and the degree of their subordination to imperial or powerful states varied significantly, the kings of Philistia throughout much of the Iron Age, the client King Herod the Great under the Romans in the 1st century AD (discussed in chapter four), the Ghassanid tribal Arab federate kings (supreme phylarchs) of Palaestina Secunda, Palaestina Prima and Palaestina Tertia in the 6th and early 7th centuries (discussed in chapter five) and to a lesser extent the autonomous regime of Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar in the 18th century were cases in point.
• Palestinian practical sovereignty and statehood: this was achieved by Daher al-‘Umar following his successful rebellion against Ottoman rule in the middle of the 18th century (discussed in chapter eight).
• Ecclesiastical independence and autocephaly: this was achieved by the Church of Aelia Capitolina and Provincia Palaestina from the mid-5th century following the Council of Chalcedon (discussed in chapter four).
If your slogan implies genocide, as your example also does, yes it is hate speech. You cannot undo colonization by disposing the occupiers. Any nation is occupying some native land in one form or another.
It is an emancipatory slogan that calls for an end to apartheid and for equal rights.
If you want to say "Free Palestine", you could say "Free Palestine". "From the river to the sea" is also used by Israel and I bet I don't have to convince you as hard that they aren't talking about peaceful co-existance.
See here
Yeah, it's not a surprise that ethnosupremacist fascists dedicated to ethnic cleansing use their twisted version as a call for even more ethnic cleansing.
You're going to have to elaborate on how "from the desert to the sea" implies genocide.
It doesn't, any more than "from the river to the sea".
The only way you can think "river to sea" slogan implies genociding the Israeli occupiers is if you can't possibly imagine any other way to transfer ownership than brutal imperialistic colonizer-like expansion. You know, like what Israelis are currently doing to Palestinians.
Framing it as "you're calling for genocide" is just another way zionists try to conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism.
It seems to me like people like this are telling on themselves that they're stuck in Colonial/imperial mindsets and lack imagination.
In the 1960s and 70s it became the signature phrase of the Palestine Liberation Organization to indicate the replacement of the State of Israel with a State of Palestine extending “from the river to the sea,” including the expulsion of Jews.
Hamas have since called for the expulsion of all Jews.
Hamas proclaims it in its 1988 founding, charter document, The Hamas Covenant. The second paragraph declares to all the world that, “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.” The introduction section promises “[o]ur struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious” and will only end when “the enemy is vanquished and Allah’s victory is realized,”
It refers to genociding the Jews to get back the area. Technically it doesn't, like saying 'all lives matter' isn't technically anti-black, but it is. Wearing a swastika might mean you support the Hindu notion of well-being, but it doesn't.
Symbols have meaning and hiding behind technicalities allows dog whistling and regressive behavior.
Yes, Israel is abhorrent in its actions in Gaza, and a form of shared peaceful cohabitation in the area would be ideal. But allowing slogans that are known to represent genocide, doesn't help.
Sure. But at some point the symbol takes on a new meaning. No one (in the west) is wearing a hindu peace symbol, thats no longer the intent/meaning of that symbol.
And I'd say 99% of people in Australia saying river to the sea aren't supporting the original intent of the Hamas documents and ideals.
They know the connotation. They are supporting Hamas. If they had an aversion to supporting Hamas, they'd steer clear of it. It's clear dog whistling.
I didn't see any anti Hamas sentiment at the Harbour Bridge march.
It means there won't be any Israelis left between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
Hamas's stated purpose for existing is to vanquish not only the state of Israel, but all Israelis and more broadly all Jews. That's overtly genocidal.
And before you call me a zionist, I don't support the Israeli government. What it's doing to Palestinians is atrocious. But I'm capable of discerning between Israelis and the the Israeli government, just like I'm capable of discerning between Palestinians and Hamas.
Israelis and Palestinians alike deserve peace, justice, security, autonomy, and self-determinism, just like every other human being in the world deserves these things.
The Israeli government and Hamas, on the other hand, are both genocidal organizations and need to be replaced with something more civilized.
The history of harassment, Palestine, and israel is largely irrelevant.
If a law prescribes (proscribes?) specific phrases regadless of intent and context, they should be chosen very, very carefully.
Im not an expert, but i think other states require a context like "intended to incite hatred".
By prescribing this particular phrase, even if you are correct, it allows harassment to portray Palestine as ignored and persecuted - the very intention of terrorism.
Should people be allowed to use nazi slogans at protests? What about racist slogans?
I understand it's dicey to draw a line somewhere, but do you really believe hate speech should be protected as political speech? It's a slippery slope either way, the trick is to find the point of balance.
And repeating a phrase which initial intent is to call for the eradication of an entire ethnic group is, in my opinion, on the side of the line that should be considered hate speech, promoting violence, and shouldn't be protected.
The history of the conflict is indeed relevant. And the proscription of the phrase isn't being done "regardless of intent and context."
(By the way, 'proscribe' means to condemn something; 'prescribe' means doctor's orders)
I'm not following the logic of your last paragraph.
No it doesn't. It means the land won't be owned by Israel.
And what do you think the plan is for all the Israeli civilians who are currently living there?
Do you expect a Hamas-led government to treat them with basic dignity and respect for human rights?