I’d never heard the chant “From the river to the sea, Palestinians will be free”, until protests broke out after the Israeli military response to Hamas’s terrorist attacks on October 7th. The chant isn’t novel, but it’s causing a lot of division. Some Jewish people claim it is calling for the elimination of all Jewish people. While many Palestinian’s claim it’s a chant for equal rights. I decided to do a little research and even the research is divisive.
I am fascinated by how slogans that oppose oppression trigger the side of the perceived oppressors. The murder of George Floyd by the 4 Minneapolis policemen gave birth to the Black Lives Matter movement and the defund the police slogan. Many white people interpreted both as “anti-white” slogans that threatened “white peoples” very existence. I’d argue that is not the case.
Let me be perfectly clear, I’ve never felt my very existence was being threatened, whereas these groups have felt the threat of violence, exclusion, and even death. So, I won’t speak to their pain because that would be insincere.
My white privilege excludes me from interpreting what the BLM movement and slogan’s mean to Black people. I can say what they’ve meant to me as I participated in recent rallies and marches. In the 247 years we’ve been a country, institutional racism has guaranteed that Black people matter… less.
I’m a white suburban girl. Growing up I enjoyed treelined streets, good schools, services, affordable housing, and access to healthy food. I saw the police as a friend, a protector. Black neighborhoods have been systemically blighted, generations of Black men have been lost to the prison industrial complex. To these communities, our government has used surveillance, policing, and incarceration as a solution to economic, social, and political problems. To me, defund the police, isn’t a literal rally cry. Thirty seven percent of my hometown’s budget is allocated to policing. What if a portion of that money was spent on addressing the factors that contribute to high crime; failing schools, unemployment, unsafe housing, food and health care deserts, environmental injustice to name a few? If poverty is the number one factor in crime rates, what if we spent more money addressing poverty rather than criminalizing it?
In my own experience, equality is the “boogeyman”. If they can convince the majority that equality will take away their rights and privileges, they can hold onto what they perceive as theirs and theirs alone. Is it possible that the chant “from the river to the sea, Palestinians will be free”, it’s simply a plea for equal rights and not a battle cry for annihilation of another group of people?
