War of words obscures horror of real war

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Two Edina High School students were suspended last month for chanting, "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!"

At American universities, administrators are punishing student demonstrators who chant the same thing.

And when U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., the only Palestinian-American in Congress, invoked those words, she was censured by her colleagues.

It is a war of words, diverting attention from a real war whose most recent battle started with a massacre of some 1,200 Israelis and the kidnapping of 240 Israeli hostages by Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza. Gaza is where more than 2 million Palestinians live in a virtual prison imposed by Israel. In revenge for the massacre by Hamas, Israel has besieged, bombed and invaded Gaza, laying waste to much of the territory and killing an estimated 20,000 Palestinians — the majority children and women.

The disproportionate casualties and even greater imbalance in weapons of death and destruction are finally getting attention — even among members of Congress who are currently considering the Biden administration's proposal to give Israel an additional $14 billion as it crusades to destroy Hamas. Never mind the "collateral damage" of tens of thousands of civilians (or "vermin," as one Israeli official called them). Israel is waging a war of retribution — collective punishment that looks like genocide.

And so, Israel partisans attempt to divert our attention — and our eyes — with a war of words.

The 10 words, "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free," are said to threaten genocide for Jews. So, what do those 10 words mean? Well, that depends. Just like the fraught history of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, those words mean different things to different people.

To ardent Zionists, Israeli settlers, the Jewish diaspora and others, the chant calls for the end to a Jewish state and elimination of Jews from the entire area of historic Palestine. In the chant they hear threats of another Holocaust.

Not incidentally, Israel already controls all the area between the river and the sea. In their 1948 war of independence, the Israelis took 78% of Palestine. Then, in 1967, they occupied and began moving Jewish settlers into Gaza and the West Bank — the remainder of historic Palestine. The charter of Israel's Likud party declares there will be only Israeli sovereignty (read: one state) between "the Sea and the Jordan [River]." And it is good to remember that Israel has enshrined Jewish supremacy in its foundational Basic Law.

To Hamas and others who may wish or seek the destruction of the Jewish state, the chant might seem like a call to arms for those whose weapons are vastly inferior to those of the well-armed Jewish state. To fix on only that meaning of the chant, however, is to doom any resolution of the long Palestinian-Israeli war to a zero-sum game of them-or-us.

But to Rashida Tlaib and to many others, the chant expresses hope they will one day be free to live as equals in all of Palestine, their historic homeland. They will not be confined to disconnected areas in the West Bank or imprisoned in Gaza or live as second-class citizens of a Jewish state. They envision Palestinians and Jews living together in a single state, not a Jewish state but a state of all its citizens.

That is an aspiration that we, as Americans, should support. It is not, however, what our country currently supports. Our policies support Israeli supremacy and the subjugation of Palestinians.

When I hear Americans chanting, "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free," I hear echoes of the American civil rights anthem "We Shall Overcome," the song that powered the movement for racial justice and equality in America. In the 1960s, some of the strongest voices singing that song at marches belonged to American Jews. Many of those same justice-driven Jews are marching and chanting with the Palestinians today. They know there is still so much injustice to be overcome.

Words are powerful. They can change the subject or they can change the world. "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" is an urgent call to change the world.

Mary Christine Bader is a writer in Wayzata.