“That’s how the call for a free Palestine ‘from the river to the sea’ gained traction in the 1960s. It was part of a larger call to see a secular democratic state established in all of historic Palestine. Palestinians hoped their state would be free from oppression of all sorts, from Israeli as well as from Arab regimes.”
Remember, she is talking about the people who elected Hamas in Gaza. Hamas is dedicated to eradicating Israel in the name of Islam. The Palestinian Authority that rules Judea and Samaria is likewise given to annihilationist Islamic rhetoric regarding Israel, particularly from its Fatah arm. If the “Palestinians” want a “secular democratic state,” why haven’t they established one in either Judea and Samaria or Gaza?
“And notwithstanding the extreme rhetoric of some leaders on both sides, a recent joint poll shows that only a small minority of Palestinians see “expulsion” as a solution to the conflict – 15%…”
Maybe, but those “Palestinian” people aren’t in charge. And Mahmoud Abbas has said that no Jews would be allowed to live in a “Palestinian” state, as has Sheikh Hammam Saeed, leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan. Fatah has also called upon Jews to leave the area.
The Forward should be ashamed for publishing this grotesque attempt to whitewash a clearly genocidal call. Maha Nassar is an Associate Professor in the School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies at the University of Arizona; the Forward follows this piece with the announcement that “the views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward.”
Well, all right, but notice that you seldom see op-eds in the Forward by those who don’t reflect its editorial stance.
“‘From The River To The Sea’ Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Means,” by Maha Nassar, Forward, December 3, 2018:
Over the weekend, scholar and social justice activist Marc Lamont Hill apologized for ending his recent remarks at United Nations by calling for “a free Palestine from the river to the sea.” His apology came after three days of furious online attacks and criticism from many people who felt deeply hurt by his remarks.
Critics have pointed to Hamas’s use of this phrase to claim that Hill was either deliberately parroting a Hamas line that calls for Israel’s elimination, or at the very least ignorantly repeating a deeply offensive and triggering phrase.
Yet lost in all these discussions is any acknowledgement of what this phrase actually means — and has meant — to Palestinians of all political stripes and convictions. As a Palestinian American and a scholar of Palestinian history, I’m concerned by the lack of interest in how this phrase is understood by the people who invoke it….
That’s how the call for a free Palestine “from the river to the sea” gained traction in the 1960s. It was part of a larger call to see a secular democratic state established in all of historic Palestine. Palestinians hoped their state would be free from oppression of all sorts, from Israeli as well as from Arab regimes.
To be sure, a lot of Palestinians thought that in a single democratic state, many Jewish Israelis would voluntarily leave, like the French settlers in Algeria did when that country gained its independence from the French. Their belief stemmed from the anti-colonial context in which the Palestinian liberation movement arose.
That’s why, despite the occasional bout of overheated rhetoric from some leaders, there was no official Palestinian position calling for the forced removal of Jews from Palestine. This continued to be their position despite an Israeli media campaign following the 1967 war that claimed Palestinians wished to “throw Jews into the sea.”
While Palestinians viewed Zionists as akin to colonial settlers, Jews who were willing to live as equals with the Palestinians were welcome to stay. In his 1974 speech to the UN, Fatah leader and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat declared, “when we speak of our common hopes for the Palestine of tomorrow we include in our perspective all Jews now living in Palestine who choose to live with us there in peace and without discrimination.”…
And notwithstanding the extreme rhetoric of some leaders on both sides, a recent joint poll shows that only a small minority of Palestinians see “expulsion” as a solution to the conflict – 15% — which is incidentally the same percentage of Israelis who view this as the only solution….
Most troubling for me, the belief that a “free Palestine” would necessarily lead to the mass annihilation of Jewish Israelis is rooted in deeply racist and Islamophobic assumptions about who the Palestinians are and what they want….