J7 letter to Facebook about its decision about the phrase “from the river to the sea”.

Mr. Mark Zucker­berg, CEO
Meta
1 Hack­er Way
Men­lo Park, CA 94025

Dear Mr. Zucker­berg,

We write to you as lead­ers of sev­en of the largest Jew­ish Dias­po­ra com­mu­ni­ties rep­re­sent­ing over 90% of Jews glob­al­ly out­side of Israel. As Jews, our com­mu­ni­ties con­tin­ue to feel the impact of the bru­tal Hamas attack of Octo­ber 7, 2023, with its death toll of over 1200 Israelis, over 4000 wound­ed, and over 250 tak­en hostage, and over a hun­dred still held cap­tive in Gaza. Our Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ties con­tin­ue to bear the brunt of dra­mat­ic increas­es of anti­semitism, with huge num­ber of attacks on our com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers, our stu­dents, our insti­tu­tions, both on the streets and online. Alarm­ing­ly, the Over­sight Board (OB) released its Sep­tem­ber 4, 2024 deci­sion that the phrase “from the riv­er to the sea” is not hate. We are pro­found­ly dis­mayed at the Over­sight Board’s deci­sion, and we urge Meta to reject it and amend its hate pol­i­cy to pro­hib­it this phrase that effec­tive­ly calls for the expul­sion of half of the world’s Jews.

We fear that accep­tance of this deci­sion would rep­re­sent an indif­fer­ence to online hate and harass­ment. Regret­tably, this has been a pat­tern in Meta. From the decade it took Meta to real­ize that Holo­caust denial is indeed hate, to your well-doc­u­ment­ed role in the Geno­cide of the Rohingya Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty, to the ongo­ing fail­ure to address hate against the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty that has led to severe offline harms, to your role in foment­ing move­ments root­ed in con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries like Qanon that ulti­mate­ly lead to the Jan­u­ary 6 insur­rec­tion against the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment, Meta has sad­ly made itself a haven for rad­i­cal­iza­tion and extreme ide­olo­gies in the pur­suit of prof­it.

The phrase “from the riv­er to the sea” is hate speech. This ral­ly­ing cry, enshrined in the char­ter of Hamas, has long been used by anti-Israel voic­es, includ­ing sup­port­ers of ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions such as Hamas and the PFLP, which seek Israel’s destruc­tion through vio­lent means. It is fun­da­men­tal­ly a call for a Pales­tin­ian state extend­ing from the Jor­dan Riv­er to the Mediter­ranean Sea, ter­ri­to­ry that includes the entire­ty of the State of Israel, which would mean the dis­man­tling of the Jew­ish state. It is an anti­se­mit­ic charge deny­ing the Jew­ish right to self-deter­mi­na­tion, includ­ing through the forced removal of Jews from their ances­tral home­land. Indeed, the Ara­bic ver­sion of the slo­gan is ‘From the water to the water, Pales­tine will be Arab’ (min el-mayeh lil-mayeh, Filastin Ara­biyeh), mak­ing the mean­ing crys­tal clear: there is no space for Jews.

Usage of this phrase has the effect of mak­ing mem­bers of the Jew­ish and pro-Israel com­mu­ni­ty feel unsafe and ostra­cized. A recent study of the Amer­i­can cam­pus envi­ron­ment from the Chica­go Project on Secu­ri­ty and Threats at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go (CPOST) found that “66% of Jew­ish col­lege stu­dents under­stand the pro-Pales­tin­ian protest chant “From the Riv­er to the Sea, Pales­tine Will Be Free” to mean the expul­sion and geno­cide of Israeli Jews.”

Under­stand­ing that “zero tol­er­ance does not mean zero occur­rence,” accept­ing the Over­sight Board’s deci­sion on this case will clear­ly indi­cate Meta’s will­ing­ness to tol­er­ate vio­lent hate speech on its plat­form. More­over, the focus on the intent of the speak­er over the impact of the speech in this deci­sion shows a cal­lous dis­re­gard for the expe­ri­ence of mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties.

As the lead­ers of com­mu­ni­ties rep­re­sent­ing the largest Dias­po­ra Jew­ish pop­u­la­tions, we call on Meta to rec­og­nize the harm this phrase pos­es to the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty world­wide, reject the Over­sight Board’s short-sight­ed deci­sion and urge it instead to take steps to address the ongo­ing issues with online hate and harass­ment that con­tin­ue to pro­lif­er­ate across Meta’s many plat­forms.

Sin­cere­ly,
Argenti­na: Del­e­gación de Aso­cia­ciones Israeli­tas Argenti­nas (DAIA)
Aus­tralia: Exec­u­tive Coun­cil of Aus­tralian Jew­ry (ECAJ)
Cana­da: Cen­tre for Israel and Jew­ish Affairs (CIJA)
France: Con­seil Représen­tatif des Insti­tu­tions Juives de France (CRIF)
Ger­many: Cen­tral Coun­cil of Jews in Ger­many
The Unit­ed King­dom: Board of Deputies of British Jews
The Unit­ed States: ADL (Anti-Defama­tion League) and the Con­fer­ence of Pres­i­dents of Major Amer­i­can Jew­ish Orga­ni­za­tions