Table of Contents
Well, it’s official, Chloe Swarbrick: you’re bellowing an antisemitic, genocidal hate slogan. No less an authority than the US House of Representatives has overwhelmingly agreed.
Before Chloe and her anti-Israel chums start blithering that it’s all just the wicked Republicans, the measure was co-sponsored by two Democrats. It passed with 377 votes – meaning that 162 of Joe Biden’s Democrats voted in agreement.
Our resolution makes it clear that the slogan ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ is antisemitic and calls for the total eradication of the Jewish, democratic state of Israel and the annihilation of the Jewish people.
Josh Gottheimer, D, New Jersey
The phrase has been chanted at universities and anti-Israel rallies around the US since Hamas attacked the Jewish state on Oct 7, killing an estimated 1,200 people, including 33 Americans.
Critics say the motto, which refers to the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, is a call for the eradication of Israel and its people.
The resolution, introduced in November by Long Island Rep Anthony D’Esposito (R-NY) and co-sponsored by Reps Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) and Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla), said the slogan “seeks to deny Jewish people the right to self-determination” and noted its use as a “rallying cry” by terror groups including Hamas, Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
“[A]nyone who calls for the eradication of Israel and the Jewish people are antisemitic and must always be condemned,” the resolution concluded.
If Chloe wants to keep up her unconvincing denials of antisemitism, well, she’s in appropriately odious company.
Among those who voted “nay” were so-called Squad members Ilhan Omar (D-Minn), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), Cori Bush (D-Mo) and House Progressive Caucus chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash).
Woke Rep Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich) also voted against the resolution – months after she was censured for her harsh rhetoric toward Israel, including repeated use of the phrase.
New York Post
Know them by the company they keep, indeed.
Apologists for genocide try to muddy the waters by arguing that the phrase has a complicated history, and has even been used by Israelis, at times.
That may be true enough, but what matters is the current context in which it’s used: it’s the war-cry of Islamist terror groups in “Palestine”, such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Unlike the Greens, they’re not even hiding their Jew-hating intent.
According to the revised 2017 Hamas charter, they reject “any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea”, which they further explain to mean the complete destruction of the Jewish state.
Islamic Jihad is even more blunt: “from the river to the sea – [Palestine] is an Arab Islamic land… and the Israeli presence in Palestine is a null existence, which is forbidden by [Islamic] law to recognize”.
Even Germany has recognised its genocidal meaning and banned the phrase, just as they do Nazi slogans and symbols.
Yet again, know Swarbrick and the Greens by the company they keep – and never forget that the world’s first Greens party was founded by a roster of ex-Nazis.
The antisemitic roots of the Greens run deep.
