‘From the River to the Sea’: US students must have the freedom to speak with their conscience

Over the last seven months, cities and college campuses around the United States have seen sustained demonstrations against the humanitarian catastrophe unleashed by Israel’s assault on Gaza, which followed the horrific Hamas attacks of October 7. The demonstrations have intensified in recent days in the face of police confrontations with students at universities such as Columbia, New York University and the University of Texas, Austin.

A common slogan at these protests is “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Critics of the pro-Palestine movement have condemned this phrase as genocidal in intent, aimed at exterminating the state and people of Israel.

I understand where this anxiety comes from. Hamas is a brutal, intolerant organisation that has steadfastly refused to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist. Yet, to equate the violent and exclusionary vision of Hamas extremists with protesting students in the United States is as unfair as it is undemocratic.

I speak with some authority on this issue. I am a college professor in the US and teach international conflict and American foreign policy. I often debate the Israel-Palestine conflict with my students. I have traveled to both Israel and Palestine and have worked with Palestinian youth on media literacy skills. In 2023, I co-produced a documentary film, which traces the aspirations of two Palestinian women content creators.

In my classes, we talk about protest, dissent, activism, conflict, civil disobedience, international humanitarian law – in other words, about politics. I encourage my students to use their education to own their power and to harness that power towards challenging injustice where they see it. It saddens me to see students across the US being condemned, silenced, and punished for uttering a phrase which, in their own interpretation, does not mean Israel’s extermination.

I know this because I have spoken to them. I have been to protests in to see for myself – and, in each instance, I have been moved by the inclusive, interfaith, and intersectional solidarity on display. When I ask, rather than assume, what youth think, I find that many believe that all who live on the land between the river and the sea, which includes Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, should be free. This necessarily includes freedom for Palestinians, who, according to many observers, live under an apartheid system, created and enforced by the government of Israel.

Lost in this debate is the fact there is one other entity which also uses this controversial phrase. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party noted in its 1977 platform, “The right of the Jewish people to the land of Israel is eternal and indisputable… between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.”

By illegally annexing Palestinian land and changing Israel’s domestic laws, Likud has worked to realise its original, exclusionary promise. In 2018, Israel passed a set of Basic Laws, which assert that the right to national self-determination is “unique to the Jewish People”. In 2022, the newly elected government noted, in its guiding principles, that “the Jewish people have an exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the Land of Israel” and that the government will promote the settlement of all of that land, including “Galilee, the Negev, the Golan and Judea and Samaria”.

The Likud Party and its allies have made it clear that they want complete control over the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea; even though, under international law and its own treaty commitments, it must share parts of that land with Palestinians.

In chanting “from the river to the sea”, many protesting youth are calling for Palestinians to have the freedoms that are explicitly denied to them by the government of Israel. And what has been the response to this from political leaders and university administration? They are quick to label the students as anti-Semitic; the students are silenced them for having political opinions; they are suspended, and even beaten and arrested.

Yet, the US government thinks nothing of sending 2000-pound bombs to the government of Israel, a government credibly accused of committing multiple war crimes and of acting in violation of US law. Just recently, the United States Congress passed a bill that sends even more military aid to Israel, a bill that was quickly signed by President Joe Biden.

What might freedom for Palestinians look like? How can this disputed land, so torn by violence, be a home to both Israelis and Palestinians? I do not have the answer. But I do know that we must be willing to ask these questions with seriousness. It is not anti-Semitic to criticise the state of Israel; it is not anti-Semitic to ask for Palestinians to be free.

Speaking after her arrest for attempting to stop the beating of a young protestor, Emory Professor Noëlle McAfee said that the youth are the “conscience of our culture”. Let’s give students the room to speak with their conscience. The US has partnered Israel for decades; students in the country have every right to question the contours of that partnership.

Young Americans should be empowered to imagine, and maybe even help create, a different future; one where all of the people between the river the sea – be they Jewish, Muslim, Christian, agnostic, or atheist – live in peace and freedom.

Bidisha Biswas is Professor of Political Science at Western Washington University.