Will Palestine Be Liberated "From the River to the Sea"?

Pro-Palestine Rally in Queens, NY May 22, 2021
Photo Credit: Sang Cheng / Shutterstock.com

In the last two years, the most ubiquitous chant heard at anti-Israel demonstrations in the United States is "Free, Free Palestine. From the River to the Sea". To those who were chanting this phrase, there was no doubt that they were calling for the destruction of Israel. But if you read the nonsensical reports in the Washington Post and other media apologists for Hamas, they claimed that the words "from the river to the sea" was merely a "call for freedom."

In fact, the Washington Post may be guilty of promoting the biggest lie. Terrorism expert Steven Emerson of the Investigative Project on Terrorism has been documenting the maliciously false information propagated by the Post. "I found dozens of stories in the last 2 years in which Washington Post reporters brazenly sanitize the genocidal meanings of anti-Israel comments by repeating Hamas talking points in which they tell the truth in Arabic but twist the definition in English," said Emerson who is preparing a report on what he described as the "Post's adoption of the Nazi Big Lie."

Setting the Record Straight

As a scholar who has specialized in the study of Islamic history and religion as well as the politics and history of the Middle East from ancient times to the present, I would like to correct the mindless scribes at the Washington Post who have deliberately tried to soften the image of pro-Hamas demonstrators.

This slogan requires consideration from several aspects. The first of these is: which "Palestine" are they calling to liberate? The answer is simple. Never — throughout all of history — has there been a state called Palestine, and therefore no imaginary state of that name was ever conquered by anyone. For that reason, there is nothing to "liberate."

Just to recall — the name "Palestine" was given to the Land of Israel by the Romans when they conquered and destroyed the Jewish state — they destroyed its capital Jerusalem (which they called Aelia Capitolina) and named the ruined Judea "Palestina" to erase the traces of the land that God had promised forever to the Jews. This indisputable fact is mentioned in all the scriptures — including the Qur'an, where Palestinians are not even hinted at.

The Unvarnished Truth about the Real Perpetrators of Genocide

The second question that arises is: what do those who call to "liberate Palestine from the river to the sea" actually mean? free from whom? The answer is frightening. Because the chants that routinely follow "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" is yet another ditty calling for the genocide of Jews by yelling "Free, Free Palestine". The politics of intersectionalism unites the antisemitic rabble together with the far-left antisemites joined by the Islamist progenitors of unadulterated antisemitism.

It is clear to any sane person that the Jewish residents of the State of Israel (many millions) will not willingly relinquish the State of Israel. And it is equally clear that the call to liberate "Palestine from the river to the sea," is no different than a direct call to carry out the complete genocide of the Jews of Israel. For Jews, the fear of being wiped out in genocidal attacks is rooted in their entire history.

The most horrific demonstration of an actual genocidal campaign to kill as many Jews as humanly possible was seen in the Islamist murder spree of October 7, 2023. Raping women and children, cutting of limbs, burning of Jew alive and executing babies in front of their mothers was carried out by thousands of Islamist murderers who, as captured Hamas documents and photos show, were assiduously carrying out explicit instructions from Hamas leaders.

The Islamist Origins of Jew Hatred and Genocide

The Islamists' intentions toward Jews stem from the murderous historiography of Islam (the "sira"), which is based on imitation of the early deeds of Islam in practice today. According to the Islamic historiography, the Prophet Muhammad and his men slaughtered and raped most of the Jewish inhabitants of the Khaybar region, raped and looted their property, and traded survivors as slaves and concubines (the Prophet himself took two Jewish war captives as booty — Safiyya bint Huyayy ibn Akhtab and Rayhana bint Zayd).

These murderous aims and genocidal intentions were also documented in the case of the Palestinian mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini (a resident of Jerusalem) who, during World War II, conspired with senior leaders of the Third Reich to annihilate the Jews of Eretz Yisrael. Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himler, Yoachim von Ribbentrop and Joseph Goebbels even prepared extermination camps in Dothan Vally in northern Samaria to concentrate and eliminate the Jews of Eretz Yisrael in cooperation with the Germans.

The Rise of the Western Antisemites

Regrettably, it is not only bloodthirsty Islamists. There are also antisemites in Europe and the United States who adopt the slogan "liberate Palestine" and its call for the cleansing of Jews, and they do so just as in the time of the European Holocaust. When they call to "liberate Palestine" they mean "genocide," and as an intermediate semantic stage of liberation from Jews they actually mean the German–Nazi concept "Judenrein," that is, "territory cleansed of Jews."

It seems that among many of the Jew-haters in the West — who have adopted the Nazi legacy of extermination of the Jews — the desire still burns to correct the "fault" that stopped the death machine at Auschwitz and prevented the absolute extermination of the Jews as part of the "final solution." These antisemites do not find rest and pursue the Jews across the Mediterranean to annihilate them despite the Jews' return to their promised land.

Within this hatred one can even find the fabrication of war-crime allegations at The Hague against the Israel Defense Forces, which warn civilians in advance to evacuate areas saturated with Islamist terrorists in Gaza and permit the entry of food and medicine to defenseless Palestinian civilians — all while the Palestinian terrorists use them as human shields and at the same time fire missiles at Israel's civilian population. But the only reports you will find in antisemitic mainstream news outlets like the Washington Post and the Associated Press is how Israel is deliberately bombing hospitals, like Al Shifa even though the intelligence agencies of 5 countries confirmed the attacks were by the Islamic terrorist groups.

The Mindless Stupidity of the pro-Hamas demonstrators

It is astonishing to see, among the demonstrators, anarchists adorned with LGBT community flags who do not understand that were Islamist rule to prevail in Europe and the U.S., they would be the first to be executed in the city squares (as Hamas exterminates its rivals today in Gaza's city squares). Likewise, the "liberated" young women, scantily clad and protesting loudly with signs in favor of liberating Palestine would certainly have been stoned to death or raped, just as Hamas and their sister terror movements (al-Qaeda and ISIS) raped Yazidi, Syrian, Kurdish, Coptic, Israeli and other women.

It should be remembered that the driving forces of the global Islamist campaign — which operates openly against the existence of Israel — are wealthy organizations behind media outlets and academic institutions that were bought with money originating in the Muslim Brotherhood movement and from states like Qatar. Whoever identifies, warns, and alerts against the active radical Islamist enclaves operating through migrant enclaves in the West and the U.S. to take over government institutions and the streets is labeled "Islamophobic," and his life is put in danger.

The Release of Pent-Up Hatred of Jews by Western nations

It is hard to understand the West's hostility toward Israel while they themselves are in fact existentially threatened by Islamists at home, in the context of the Muslim Brotherhood's aspiration to Islamize the world by force and terror, and yet these countries continue to support Israel's destruction through the semantics of "liberate Palestine." It is incomprehensible how Spain, for example — called by Islamists "Andalusia," which they claim is an Islamic "Waqf" that must return to Islamic rule — does not realize that Israel is the barrier protecting the West against the declared malicious designs of Islam to conquer the world.

If the bearers of the genocidal slogan "liberate Palestine" were calling for the "liberation of Palestine" from the Arab invaders who penetrated it over the generations and for the destruction of Palestinian terrorist movements, and supported dedicating the Land of Israel to its real owners — the Jewish people — that would be much more logical. Such a call would be the realization of the heritage God commanded his believers in the Bible, the New Testament, and the Qur'an.

We should remember that the countries which expelled and destroyed Jews — who had been among their finest scientific and intellectual contributors before World War II—received in their place, as if by punishment, ignoble and violent Islamists who contribute nothing to society but engage in crime, terror, and subversion. Those who raise slogans against Israel and act out of stupidity and blind hatred are destined to fail, just as the Nazis and their accomplices failed, and just as Hezbollah, Hamas, and Iran were recently defeated.

IPT Senior Fellow Reuven Berko holds a Ph.D. in Middle East studies, specializing in Arab and Islamic Affairs. He served as the Adviser on Arab Affairs to the Jerusalem district police. Berko is a frequent commentator on major Arabic satellite programs and an analyst for the Arabic Affairs program on Israeli TV. He writes for a broad range of Israeli and Arab newspapers and is considered one of Israel's top experts on Arab affairs.

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