Meta’s company-funded oversight body ruled Wednesday that the social media giant shouldn’t automatically take down posts using the phrase “from the river to the sea,” a decades-old rallying cry for Palestinian nationalism that has reignited a national debate about the boundaries of acceptable speech.
Meta’s Oversight Board, an independent collection of academics, experts and lawyers who oversee thorny content decisions on the platform, said posts they examined using the phrase didn’t violate the company’s rules against hate speech, inciting violence or praising dangerous organizations.
“While [the phrase] can be understood by some as encouraging and legitimizing antisemitism and the violent elimination of Israel and its people, it is also often used as a political call for solidarity, equal rights and self-determination of the Palestinian people, and to end the war in Gaza,” the board said in its ruling.
It’s because it’s a shade too dogwhistley.
It doesn’t say HOW you clear out that land, maybe you ask them to leave politely, maybe you buy them flowers and take them out for a romantic weekend in Paris then cancel the return flight.
It’s just too vague to clearly say “slowly strangle them economically while terrorizing them and bulldozing their land out from under them”.
Hamas’s death to Israel is less subtle in comparison, although it could be construed as a disapproval of the New Zealand All Blacks especially their outside back Israel Dagg. It could even be a contempt of modern existentialist dogma through the painful reminder that, "Death to ‘is real!’