Of Rivers and Seas

by Rabbi Steven Pruzansky

(First published at Israelnationalnews.com)

“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” chant myriads of Jew haters and their airheaded acolytes in academia. It is meant to be offensive, provocative, and intimidating, and is a not-so-subtle call for the genocide of the Jews of Israel. It has become a staple at rallies and on college campuses, where analogous calls for ethnic cleansing anywhere else in the world but Israel and to any other ethnic group but Jews would be met with swift retribution. By the modern standards of the loony left, this is protected free speech.

There are those who argue that this is the case (although campus rules are stricter and the First Amendment does not alow for threatening speech) but “free” has never been synonymous with “intelligent,” and this slogan is one of the dumbest imaginable. If those who scream it ever came within a country mile of understanding the full implications of what they were saying, they would halt immediately, apologize profusely, burst out laughing, or become Zionists.

Because these protesters are more known for their blind hatred and ferocious anti-Jewish venom than they are for their perspicacity, decency, or common sense, they will pay no mind to the absurdities they continue to squeal.

Consider:

1) If Palestine would be indeed “free” if Jews in Israel were exterminated or expelled, it would become the only free Arab, Muslim country in the Middle East. This region has a sorry – i.e., deadly – history and Arabs have an unblemished record of being incapable of sustaining any type of democracy or protecting the freedoms of any of its citizens. We must therefore believe, as the chant goes, that something breathtaking and novel will occur in the Arab polity that this land – “from the river to the sea” – will achieve something no Arab state has achieved: freedom.

2) There were (are) two areas “from the river to the sea” that are controlled by Arab Muslims – the territory under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority (our Judea and Samaria) and the shrinking territory under the jurisdiction of Hamas. Neither of those areas are “free” by any reasonable definition of the term. No freedoms are protected – not press, not movement, not commerce, not speech, not religion, not assembly. Women are routinely subjected to “honor” killings by their loving relatives. The death penalty is arbitrarily and summarily applied. If “Palestine” were to be given over to the Palestinian Arabs, and is indeed to be free, it will necessitate the elimination of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.

3) The only time in all of history that “Palestine” has ever been “free” is when it has been controlled by Israel, meaning, now. Palestine was never a country or a nation. It was a geographic entity formerly called Judea, spawned by the Romans, and ruled over by Christians, Byzantines, Muslims, Crusaders, Ottomans, and the British. In the more than nineteen centuries since the destruction of the Second Temple and the exile of most but certainly not all Jews (there has always been a remnant of Jews in the land of Israel), the territory of Palestine has only tasted freedom in one era. That is from 1948 until today – and only those areas under Israel’s control. All of which makes the proper retort to “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” that “it already is! And it will only be free if it exists under its classic name, Israel, not under the name the Roman interlopers gave it. And it will only be free as long as it is governed by Jews.

4) If the pusillanimous protesters want to get technical, historic Palestine includes land on both sides of the Jordan River. That was the original British Mandate over this land in the aftermath of its conquest during World War I. The eastern part of the territory called Palestine was unilaterally severed by the British from the Jewish homeland in 1921 by Winston Churchill, who later boasted that he created Transjordan “with the stroke of a pen one Sunday afternoon in Cairo.” Perhaps that is why they mention “the river,” because though Jordan is part of historic Palestine, the lack of freedom for its citizens troubles none of the chanters, if only because the Jews do not administer that country.

In fact, the lack of freedom anywhere else in the Middle East or the world, for that matter, is of no interest. It is then not freedom that concerns them, but Jewish sovereignty. For historic Palestine to be “free,” Jordan would have to be displaced as well. But then they would need a new slogan. "From Iraq to the sea...?"

The chant is certainly insincere, but it is also fraudulent to the core. Israel is the only bastion of freedom in the entire Middle East, the only country where the rights of citizens and residents are protected. That is one good reason Israeli Arabs, for all their conflicted identity, prefer living in Israel with the Jewish Zionists rather than moving to the territory controlled by the PA or by Hamas and living under Arab Muslim rule. This is born out not only by repeated polling – but by the votes with their feet. They would rather be in Israel than anywhere else. No Israeli Arab leaves his home in Nazareth to go live in Jenin.

Indeed, it is instructive that this chant has not made its way to Israel – anywhere in Israel, from the river to the sea. The Israeli Arabs know firsthand where they find freedom and where they will find oppression, brutality, and hatred. They choose to live as a minority in freedom with the Jews than in despotism with their fellow Arabs.

“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is a poor reflection on the chanters’ morality and intelligence. As has been demonstrated, most of them cannot even name the river and the sea they are yelping about. All it has going for it is a rhyme, fueled by an intense hatred of Jews.

Our response should be a better rhyme, one created by Ribonut Achshav, the Israeli Sovereignty movement: “From the river to the sea, Israeli sovereignty.” It rhymes perfectly. It has the additional bonus of being cogent, coherent, moral, and Jewish.

We should get used to it, because when we do, the world will get used to it as well.