Long before 1967, before so-called “occupation,” and before the modern Jewish state even existed, the movement behind this slogan had already made its objective clear.
Mitch, this is one of the strongest historical breakdowns I’ve read on this subject because it forces people to confront a reality many try very hard to avoid: the violence and rejection of Jewish sovereignty existed long before 1967, long before “occupation,” and even before Israel itself existed.
What also stands out to me is how much the other side understands the power of slogans and emotional messaging. “From the river to the sea” is short, emotional, repeatable, and easy to spread, even among people who do not understand the history behind it. Meanwhile, Israel and the Jewish world still struggle to communicate their case with the same clarity and force.
That, to me, is part of the larger problem. We are constantly reacting to narratives instead of shaping them. Our opponents understand propaganda, symbolism, repetition, and social media far better than we do, while Jewish leadership often feels fragmented, defensive, and unable to present a unified message to the world.
Yet Jews all over the world stand side by side with those chanting "from the river to the sea” with their famous “Jews for” signs: not a single one of them ever holding up a sign “Jews for Jews.” For every Jew that gets it there are two Bernie Sanders.
The world will never accept Israel or a Jewish state as long as they can stand with Jews who say they shouldn't.
The Jews have been victims for 3,000 years and no gang of facts is ever going to change that as long as Jews remain the only people that eat their own. The warped defeatist mind set of the perpetual victim refuses to see things as they are. There will only be peace through strength and there will only be strength when Jews are united in that cause.
A wonderful summary of history; however, your basic premise, that this information can used with positive effect on those who refuse to hear, leaves much to be desired. Those who attend the protests and chant their b.s. understand simple chants. If you want a simple, catchy, snappy little chant that can be used as a counter-argument, feel free to use this one. "From the river to the sea, the IDF shall keep us free."
Historian Flavius Josephus is on record, tens of thousands of Jews were forced into exile and sent to Italy as slaves, while others fled to escape conquest. This is how Jews were forced into centuries of exile. Despite this, there has been an uninterrupted Jewish presence in the Land of Israel. Native Mizrahi Jews have lived there since the beginning of the Jewish people, under occupation as "Dhimmi" second-class citizens, without the right to self-rule.
Following the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire at the end of WWI, the modern Middle East was formed. While nations that never existed such as Iraq, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Lebanon were established, their right to self-determination is never unquestioned. The establishment of a Jewish homeland was hindered by Arab violence. It always was and still is about Arab violence.
Great article! Check out “The Deception of Palestinian Nationalism” stanfordreview.org. “Palestinian” Arab nationalism took root in Moscow and Cairo—a “liberation” movement invented by the Soviet KGB and carried forward to the world stage by Yasser Arafat, the Egyptian.
Excellent short history. One thing I’ve learned that you might have added is that, in Arabic, the chant is “from water to water, Palestine will be Arab.” Much more honest.
Well written. The concept of a "two state solution," oft rejected by the Arabs, the PLO, and so forth is an idyllic, beautiful, peaceful, Western, and UTTERLY UNREALISTIC concept. You can't ever have a "two state solution" when people are unwilling to recognize the State of Israel.
Unfortunately, the author reduces the call "Free Palestine" to a mere parroted slogan mouthed by the street ignorant.
Not so.
It is a call to genocide.
Proof:
1. Free Palestine
A place that is not free is a place that is conquered and occupied.
If Palestine needs to be freed it is because it has been conquered and is occupied.
Where is Palestine?
2. From the River to the Sea (Palestine will be free)
The river is the Jordan river and the sea is the Mediterranean sea.
What exists now between the River and the Sea?
Israel. Israel is the enemy, alien occupier of the Arab country, Palestine.
So whomust be removed to free Palestine? the Jews.
What must be removed to free Palestine? Israel.
How is Palestine to be freed from conquest and occupation?
3. Globalize the Intifada. There is Only One Solution, Intifada Revolution
Intifada is the Islamic call to kill Israelis and Jews wherever one finds them per Sahih Bukhari 2926 (Book 56, Hadith 139) and Sahih Muslim 2922 (Book 54, Hadith 99).
In keeping with this policy, the first and second intifada (1987-1993 and 2000-2005) were random attacks on Israelis on the street, in their homes, in schools, on buses, in cafés, in airports, Intifada is the Islamic call to kill Jews in Israel and abroad wherever they can be found.
Why should Israelis be killed?
4. "Jihad Now"
Jihad is the Islamic religious call to kill Israelis / Jews wherever one finds them. As Sasih al-Bukhari 2926 declares: “The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say. 'O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him.' "
And according to Hamas' Covenant, Article 15: "The day that enemies usurp part of Muslim land, Jihad becomes the individual duty of every Muslim. In face of the Jews' usurpation of Palestine, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised."
And how should Israelis be killed to free the land of its conquerors and occupiers?
5. Resistance by Any Means
Random attacks on Jews be they in Israeli or abroad through knife stabbing, car ramming, bombings, raping, mutilating, decapitating, burning, are all legitimate acts of resistance. In fact, because Jews came from Europe to take over the country Palestine, it is necessary to kill all Jews anywhere they live lest they descend once again upon Palestinians and conquer and humiliate them.
Problem is according to Article II of the Genocide Convention
Article II:
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
Article III:
The following acts shall be punishable:
(a) Genocide;
(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;
(c) DIRECT AND PUBLIC INCITEMENT TO COMMIT GENOCIDE;
(rf) Attempt to commit genocide;
(e) Complicity in genocide.
Thus, according to International Law’s legal definition of genocide, the chants are calls to commit genocide against a people who less than a hundred years ago were subjected to this very crime.
October 7th was that call put into action.
The slogans are not to champion a good cause by any standard of morality, ethics, or law. It is the call to exterminate a people in the name of a Righteous Cause,
As one well know expression goes, "All it takes for evil to prevail is for good men to look on and do nothing."
CONCLUSION: Because calls to commit genocide — such as through slogans — signal their ”intent to destroy, in whole or in part . . . [by] Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,” according to the Convention on Genocide those chanting "Free Palestine" and the rest of the slogans are guilty of committing this very crime themselves.
Lastly, the author continually uses the term "The West Bank" as if that was its real designation, of course now routinely referred to by the media, Social Justice NGOs, and most politicians as "The Occupied West Bank."
Problem is in 1950 Jordan's king, Abdullah bin Hussein renamed the area his country had seized through war to sever any relationship the Jews had to the place.
For thousands of years until then, the territory was called Judea and Samaria. According to UN Charter 2(4) and Hague Convention Articles 43 & 55 Jordan violated the prohibition of any state from changing the permanent character of a territory it captures through war. Name changing was but one of the changes in permanent character Jordan created in 1950.
Of course through the power and influence of its institutions, the East and West enthusiastically embraced and promoted this name change because it resonated with their religeo-cultural preconception of Jews, as attested by their history with the Jews.
Those Jews who use the Jordanian geographical renaming are validating the not-so-subtle implication that Jews have no connection to and therefore no place in this "indigenous Palestinian national territory."
In other words, every time a Jew or non-Jews uses the term "The West Bank" what they are really saying is "Juden raus!"
Maybe the kids should read this post. Since they don't read, apparently, unless it's a tract from the DSA. Cuba has long been "progressive" China, too. Reality never intrudes on the kids. Not about sexual identity, not about climate change, not about much of anything. They hear slogans. For the writer Ken who expresses disgust/frustration with the Jews for....I feel it too.
Dershowitz on radio described Sanders as evil. I'm glad he agrees with me.
This article is powerful because many of its central historical points are true, and because the Jewish fear behind it is real.
Anti-Jewish violence in Palestine did not begin in 1948 or 1967. The attacks of 1920, 1921 and 1929 matter. Hebron matters. Haj Amin al-Husseini matters. The original PLO was founded before Israel controlled the West Bank and Gaza, and its early position was plainly rejectionist. Any explanation of the conflict that begins only with occupation after 1967 leaves out a large and uncomfortable part of the history.
The chant “from the river to the sea” is not an innocent phrase. The geography is clear: the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea includes the State of Israel. Even where the chant is not intended by every person as a call to kill Jews, it leaves no clear place for Jewish sovereignty. In Islamist or openly rejectionist usage, the ambiguity disappears altogether. Jews are not being unreasonable when they hear it as eliminationist.
There is also a linguistic point that should not be ignored. The English chant, “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” is often defended as a liberation slogan. But a widely used Arabic version, “من المية للمية، فلسطين عربية,” means “from the water to the water, Palestine is Arab.” That is not merely a demand for equal rights or an end to occupation. It is an Arab nationalist claim over the whole space. This does not mean every person chanting the English version consciously intends violence against Jews. But it does explain why Jews hear the slogan as more than vague liberation language. In that version, the ambiguity is reduced: the land is not simply to be free; it is to be Arab.
Nor should these slogans be viewed in isolation from adjacent chants and movements. “Free Palestine” can mean different things depending on speaker and context. But when it is paired with “from the river to the sea,” “globalise the intifada,” “jihad now,” or “by any means necessary,” the benign reading becomes much harder to sustain. Context matters. A phrase that might be defended as liberation language in one setting can become intimidation or incitement in another, especially when used by crowds near Jewish communities, or by movements that openly reject Jewish sovereignty.
That matters especially now, with antisemitism rising openly in many places. This cannot be treated as a detached intellectual exercise. When slogans about the erasure of Israel are chanted by angry crowds, or used near Jewish communities, campuses, synagogues or bystanders, the effect is not theoretical. It is intimidation, whether every person chanting it understands that or not.
But accepting all of that does not require accepting every historical conclusion the article draws.
The article takes the question of who first used violence and uses it to answer a different question: who has a legitimate claim. Those are not the same question.
The people living in Mandate Palestine were not foreign trespassers. They were communities living under Ottoman rule and then British rule, with homes, land, villages, towns, family histories, religious sites and local institutions. They did not have a prior sovereign Palestinian state, but that is not the same as having no political claim. People do not need to have previously held modern statehood in order to have a legitimate fear of political displacement.
The word “Palestinian” should not be turned into a trick question either. It is a practical identifier for people and descendants of people who lived in, came from, or identified with Palestine as a geographic and later political community. During the Mandate period, the term could apply broadly to inhabitants of the territory. After 1948, Jews of the Mandate became Israelis, while the displaced and stateless Arab population increasingly claimed “Palestinian” as their national identity. That does not prove there was a prior sovereign Palestinian state. It simply recognises that identities can harden through displacement and history.
Nor does Jewish peoplehood need to be reduced to religion in order to make this point. Jews are a people with deep ancestral, historical, cultural and religious ties to the land. That connection is real. Israel is not an invented colonial abstraction. But recognising Jewish return does not require pretending that everyone else living there was merely an outsider.
Palestinian rejectionism also should not be softened. Palestinian leadership has repeatedly rejected, delayed or failed to close political openings, and that history matters. For much of the post-1948 period, the dominant Palestinian nationalist position was not a state alongside Israel, but the recovery or liberation of Palestine as a whole. The two-state framework was not always treated as a legitimate compromise; for many, it was seen as surrendering land they believed had been taken from them. That history cannot be sanitised.
But the details and viability of particular offers still matter. Camp David in 2000 and Olmert’s 2008 proposal were serious moments, and Palestinian leadership bears responsibility for failing to turn them into settlement. Yet Dennis Ross’s account is not the only account. Barak’s government was collapsing shortly after Camp David. Olmert was politically weakened and close to leaving office. None of this excuses Palestinian rejectionism. It simply means failed negotiations should not be turned into proof of one unchanged motive across all Palestinians, all factions and all periods.
The real history is harder. Some Arab and Palestinian leaders rejected Jewish sovereignty outright. Some movements became openly antisemitic, terrorist and eliminationist. Hamas and Islamist rejectionism cannot be sanitised. But Palestinian grievance after 1948 was not simply imagined. War, displacement, refugeehood, occupation after 1967, failed diplomacy, retaliation, terrorism, state power and generational humiliation all fed the conflict. The hostility evolved through history. It was not one unchanged hatred moving untouched from 1920 to today.
So yes, the article is right to reject the lazy claim that everything began in 1967. It is right to say Jewish fear of the chant is not paranoia. It is right to remember the early massacres.
But the issue is not whether both sides have equal merit. They do not, not in every event, not in every argument, and certainly not in every slogan.
The issue is whether true facts are being used with historical discipline.
The chant is not innocent. Antisemitism is real and rising. Jewish fear is justified. Hamas and Islamist rejectionism cannot be sanitised. Palestinian rejectionism cannot be sanitised either. But none of that requires turning Palestinian rootedness into fiction, or treating every later Palestinian grievance as proof of one unchanged hatred moving untouched from 1920 to today.
Historical priority of grievance does not determine the validity of grievance. The early violence was real. It does not follow that Palestinians who lost homes in 1948 have no claim because some Arab leaders and mobs in 1920, 1921 or 1929 were antisemitic or murderous.
Nor should Jewish fear become a licence to police Jewish identity. Jews can disagree with Israeli policy, settlements, war conduct or political leadership without ceasing to care about Jewish safety. Jewish solidarity against antisemitism matters. Jewish conformity of political opinion should not be the admission ticket.
The facts are ugly enough. They do not need to be flattened. The chant is dangerous. The history is not simple. And serious history should not become a weapon for erasing either Jewish peoplehood or Palestinian rootedness.
Mitch, this is one of the strongest historical breakdowns I’ve read on this subject because it forces people to confront a reality many try very hard to avoid: the violence and rejection of Jewish sovereignty existed long before 1967, long before “occupation,” and even before Israel itself existed.
What also stands out to me is how much the other side understands the power of slogans and emotional messaging. “From the river to the sea” is short, emotional, repeatable, and easy to spread, even among people who do not understand the history behind it. Meanwhile, Israel and the Jewish world still struggle to communicate their case with the same clarity and force.
That, to me, is part of the larger problem. We are constantly reacting to narratives instead of shaping them. Our opponents understand propaganda, symbolism, repetition, and social media far better than we do, while Jewish leadership often feels fragmented, defensive, and unable to present a unified message to the world.
Yet Jews all over the world stand side by side with those chanting "from the river to the sea” with their famous “Jews for” signs: not a single one of them ever holding up a sign “Jews for Jews.” For every Jew that gets it there are two Bernie Sanders.
The world will never accept Israel or a Jewish state as long as they can stand with Jews who say they shouldn't.
The Jews have been victims for 3,000 years and no gang of facts is ever going to change that as long as Jews remain the only people that eat their own. The warped defeatist mind set of the perpetual victim refuses to see things as they are. There will only be peace through strength and there will only be strength when Jews are united in that cause.
A wonderful summary of history; however, your basic premise, that this information can used with positive effect on those who refuse to hear, leaves much to be desired. Those who attend the protests and chant their b.s. understand simple chants. If you want a simple, catchy, snappy little chant that can be used as a counter-argument, feel free to use this one. "From the river to the sea, the IDF shall keep us free."
As the great Einat Wilf (and others) have said - Palestinian nationalism is about the destruction of a country not the creation of a country.
Excellent history in a nutshell.
Historian Flavius Josephus is on record, tens of thousands of Jews were forced into exile and sent to Italy as slaves, while others fled to escape conquest. This is how Jews were forced into centuries of exile. Despite this, there has been an uninterrupted Jewish presence in the Land of Israel. Native Mizrahi Jews have lived there since the beginning of the Jewish people, under occupation as "Dhimmi" second-class citizens, without the right to self-rule.
Following the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire at the end of WWI, the modern Middle East was formed. While nations that never existed such as Iraq, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Lebanon were established, their right to self-determination is never unquestioned. The establishment of a Jewish homeland was hindered by Arab violence. It always was and still is about Arab violence.
Great article! Check out “The Deception of Palestinian Nationalism” stanfordreview.org. “Palestinian” Arab nationalism took root in Moscow and Cairo—a “liberation” movement invented by the Soviet KGB and carried forward to the world stage by Yasser Arafat, the Egyptian.
Excellent short history. One thing I’ve learned that you might have added is that, in Arabic, the chant is “from water to water, Palestine will be Arab.” Much more honest.
The slogan is waaay too long for the meely mouth Party-ers in their Halloween keffiyehs to understand.
A post worth bookmarking!
Well written. The concept of a "two state solution," oft rejected by the Arabs, the PLO, and so forth is an idyllic, beautiful, peaceful, Western, and UTTERLY UNREALISTIC concept. You can't ever have a "two state solution" when people are unwilling to recognize the State of Israel.
It our land. Done explaining. Now, if we can only get the liberal Jews on our side.
They get sand kicked in their face by the Dems almost every day and still haven’t learned.
🎯
Unfortunately, the author reduces the call "Free Palestine" to a mere parroted slogan mouthed by the street ignorant.
Not so.
It is a call to genocide.
Proof:
1. Free Palestine
A place that is not free is a place that is conquered and occupied.
If Palestine needs to be freed it is because it has been conquered and is occupied.
Where is Palestine?
2. From the River to the Sea (Palestine will be free)
The river is the Jordan river and the sea is the Mediterranean sea.
What exists now between the River and the Sea?
Israel. Israel is the enemy, alien occupier of the Arab country, Palestine.
So whomust be removed to free Palestine? the Jews.
What must be removed to free Palestine? Israel.
How is Palestine to be freed from conquest and occupation?
3. Globalize the Intifada. There is Only One Solution, Intifada Revolution
Intifada is the Islamic call to kill Israelis and Jews wherever one finds them per Sahih Bukhari 2926 (Book 56, Hadith 139) and Sahih Muslim 2922 (Book 54, Hadith 99).
In keeping with this policy, the first and second intifada (1987-1993 and 2000-2005) were random attacks on Israelis on the street, in their homes, in schools, on buses, in cafés, in airports, Intifada is the Islamic call to kill Jews in Israel and abroad wherever they can be found.
Why should Israelis be killed?
4. "Jihad Now"
Jihad is the Islamic religious call to kill Israelis / Jews wherever one finds them. As Sasih al-Bukhari 2926 declares: “The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say. 'O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him.' "
And according to Hamas' Covenant, Article 15: "The day that enemies usurp part of Muslim land, Jihad becomes the individual duty of every Muslim. In face of the Jews' usurpation of Palestine, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised."
And how should Israelis be killed to free the land of its conquerors and occupiers?
5. Resistance by Any Means
Random attacks on Jews be they in Israeli or abroad through knife stabbing, car ramming, bombings, raping, mutilating, decapitating, burning, are all legitimate acts of resistance. In fact, because Jews came from Europe to take over the country Palestine, it is necessary to kill all Jews anywhere they live lest they descend once again upon Palestinians and conquer and humiliate them.
Problem is according to Article II of the Genocide Convention
Article II:
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
Article III:
The following acts shall be punishable:
(a) Genocide;
(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;
(c) DIRECT AND PUBLIC INCITEMENT TO COMMIT GENOCIDE;
(rf) Attempt to commit genocide;
(e) Complicity in genocide.
Thus, according to International Law’s legal definition of genocide, the chants are calls to commit genocide against a people who less than a hundred years ago were subjected to this very crime.
October 7th was that call put into action.
The slogans are not to champion a good cause by any standard of morality, ethics, or law. It is the call to exterminate a people in the name of a Righteous Cause,
As one well know expression goes, "All it takes for evil to prevail is for good men to look on and do nothing."
CONCLUSION: Because calls to commit genocide — such as through slogans — signal their ”intent to destroy, in whole or in part . . . [by] Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,” according to the Convention on Genocide those chanting "Free Palestine" and the rest of the slogans are guilty of committing this very crime themselves.
Lastly, the author continually uses the term "The West Bank" as if that was its real designation, of course now routinely referred to by the media, Social Justice NGOs, and most politicians as "The Occupied West Bank."
Problem is in 1950 Jordan's king, Abdullah bin Hussein renamed the area his country had seized through war to sever any relationship the Jews had to the place.
For thousands of years until then, the territory was called Judea and Samaria. According to UN Charter 2(4) and Hague Convention Articles 43 & 55 Jordan violated the prohibition of any state from changing the permanent character of a territory it captures through war. Name changing was but one of the changes in permanent character Jordan created in 1950.
Of course through the power and influence of its institutions, the East and West enthusiastically embraced and promoted this name change because it resonated with their religeo-cultural preconception of Jews, as attested by their history with the Jews.
Those Jews who use the Jordanian geographical renaming are validating the not-so-subtle implication that Jews have no connection to and therefore no place in this "indigenous Palestinian national territory."
In other words, every time a Jew or non-Jews uses the term "The West Bank" what they are really saying is "Juden raus!"
Maybe the kids should read this post. Since they don't read, apparently, unless it's a tract from the DSA. Cuba has long been "progressive" China, too. Reality never intrudes on the kids. Not about sexual identity, not about climate change, not about much of anything. They hear slogans. For the writer Ken who expresses disgust/frustration with the Jews for....I feel it too.
Dershowitz on radio described Sanders as evil. I'm glad he agrees with me.
This article is powerful because many of its central historical points are true, and because the Jewish fear behind it is real.
Anti-Jewish violence in Palestine did not begin in 1948 or 1967. The attacks of 1920, 1921 and 1929 matter. Hebron matters. Haj Amin al-Husseini matters. The original PLO was founded before Israel controlled the West Bank and Gaza, and its early position was plainly rejectionist. Any explanation of the conflict that begins only with occupation after 1967 leaves out a large and uncomfortable part of the history.
The chant “from the river to the sea” is not an innocent phrase. The geography is clear: the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea includes the State of Israel. Even where the chant is not intended by every person as a call to kill Jews, it leaves no clear place for Jewish sovereignty. In Islamist or openly rejectionist usage, the ambiguity disappears altogether. Jews are not being unreasonable when they hear it as eliminationist.
There is also a linguistic point that should not be ignored. The English chant, “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” is often defended as a liberation slogan. But a widely used Arabic version, “من المية للمية، فلسطين عربية,” means “from the water to the water, Palestine is Arab.” That is not merely a demand for equal rights or an end to occupation. It is an Arab nationalist claim over the whole space. This does not mean every person chanting the English version consciously intends violence against Jews. But it does explain why Jews hear the slogan as more than vague liberation language. In that version, the ambiguity is reduced: the land is not simply to be free; it is to be Arab.
Nor should these slogans be viewed in isolation from adjacent chants and movements. “Free Palestine” can mean different things depending on speaker and context. But when it is paired with “from the river to the sea,” “globalise the intifada,” “jihad now,” or “by any means necessary,” the benign reading becomes much harder to sustain. Context matters. A phrase that might be defended as liberation language in one setting can become intimidation or incitement in another, especially when used by crowds near Jewish communities, or by movements that openly reject Jewish sovereignty.
That matters especially now, with antisemitism rising openly in many places. This cannot be treated as a detached intellectual exercise. When slogans about the erasure of Israel are chanted by angry crowds, or used near Jewish communities, campuses, synagogues or bystanders, the effect is not theoretical. It is intimidation, whether every person chanting it understands that or not.
But accepting all of that does not require accepting every historical conclusion the article draws.
The article takes the question of who first used violence and uses it to answer a different question: who has a legitimate claim. Those are not the same question.
The people living in Mandate Palestine were not foreign trespassers. They were communities living under Ottoman rule and then British rule, with homes, land, villages, towns, family histories, religious sites and local institutions. They did not have a prior sovereign Palestinian state, but that is not the same as having no political claim. People do not need to have previously held modern statehood in order to have a legitimate fear of political displacement.
The word “Palestinian” should not be turned into a trick question either. It is a practical identifier for people and descendants of people who lived in, came from, or identified with Palestine as a geographic and later political community. During the Mandate period, the term could apply broadly to inhabitants of the territory. After 1948, Jews of the Mandate became Israelis, while the displaced and stateless Arab population increasingly claimed “Palestinian” as their national identity. That does not prove there was a prior sovereign Palestinian state. It simply recognises that identities can harden through displacement and history.
Nor does Jewish peoplehood need to be reduced to religion in order to make this point. Jews are a people with deep ancestral, historical, cultural and religious ties to the land. That connection is real. Israel is not an invented colonial abstraction. But recognising Jewish return does not require pretending that everyone else living there was merely an outsider.
Palestinian rejectionism also should not be softened. Palestinian leadership has repeatedly rejected, delayed or failed to close political openings, and that history matters. For much of the post-1948 period, the dominant Palestinian nationalist position was not a state alongside Israel, but the recovery or liberation of Palestine as a whole. The two-state framework was not always treated as a legitimate compromise; for many, it was seen as surrendering land they believed had been taken from them. That history cannot be sanitised.
But the details and viability of particular offers still matter. Camp David in 2000 and Olmert’s 2008 proposal were serious moments, and Palestinian leadership bears responsibility for failing to turn them into settlement. Yet Dennis Ross’s account is not the only account. Barak’s government was collapsing shortly after Camp David. Olmert was politically weakened and close to leaving office. None of this excuses Palestinian rejectionism. It simply means failed negotiations should not be turned into proof of one unchanged motive across all Palestinians, all factions and all periods.
The real history is harder. Some Arab and Palestinian leaders rejected Jewish sovereignty outright. Some movements became openly antisemitic, terrorist and eliminationist. Hamas and Islamist rejectionism cannot be sanitised. But Palestinian grievance after 1948 was not simply imagined. War, displacement, refugeehood, occupation after 1967, failed diplomacy, retaliation, terrorism, state power and generational humiliation all fed the conflict. The hostility evolved through history. It was not one unchanged hatred moving untouched from 1920 to today.
So yes, the article is right to reject the lazy claim that everything began in 1967. It is right to say Jewish fear of the chant is not paranoia. It is right to remember the early massacres.
But the issue is not whether both sides have equal merit. They do not, not in every event, not in every argument, and certainly not in every slogan.
The issue is whether true facts are being used with historical discipline.
The chant is not innocent. Antisemitism is real and rising. Jewish fear is justified. Hamas and Islamist rejectionism cannot be sanitised. Palestinian rejectionism cannot be sanitised either. But none of that requires turning Palestinian rootedness into fiction, or treating every later Palestinian grievance as proof of one unchanged hatred moving untouched from 1920 to today.
Historical priority of grievance does not determine the validity of grievance. The early violence was real. It does not follow that Palestinians who lost homes in 1948 have no claim because some Arab leaders and mobs in 1920, 1921 or 1929 were antisemitic or murderous.
Nor should Jewish fear become a licence to police Jewish identity. Jews can disagree with Israeli policy, settlements, war conduct or political leadership without ceasing to care about Jewish safety. Jewish solidarity against antisemitism matters. Jewish conformity of political opinion should not be the admission ticket.
The facts are ugly enough. They do not need to be flattened. The chant is dangerous. The history is not simple. And serious history should not become a weapon for erasing either Jewish peoplehood or Palestinian rootedness.
You forgot to quote Rashi's comment on the first verse in the Book of Genesis.