Anti-Israel protesters hold a banner that says, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” standing in front of the president’s palace in Warsaw, Poland, on Nov. 5, 2023. Photo: IMAGO/Marek Antoni Iwanczuk via Reuters Connect

The oversight board for Facebook’s parent company announced on Wednesday that the anti-Israel slogan “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is not hate speech or a call for violence, leading to outrage from groups dedicated to combating antisemitism and other forms of bigotry.

Meta’s board posted on its official website that the popular rallying cry for anti-Israel activists did not break Meta’s “rules on Hate Speech, Violence and Incitement or Dangerous Organizations and Individuals” and therefore should not lead to content removal.

Specifically, Meta said it considered three separate uses of the phrase in Facebook posts and found they “contain contextual signs of solidarity with Palestinians — but no language calling for violence or exclusion.” The board added that the three cases did not “glorify or even refer to Hamas,” the Palestinian terrorist group that rules Gaza and is designated as “dangerous” by Meta.

“In upholding Meta’s decisions to keep up the content, the majority of the board notes the phrase has multiple meanings and is used by people in various ways and with different intentions,” the announcement stated. “A minority, however, believes that because the phrase appears in the 2017 Hamas charter and given the October 7 attacks, its use in a post should be presumed to constitute glorification of a designated entity, unless there are clear signals to the contrary.”

Despite Meta’s conclusion, many observers have argued that the slogan “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” has been widely interpreted as a call for the destruction of the Jewish state, which is located between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

Some Jewish and anti-hate groups lambasted Meta for its decision, arguing that the rallying cry is a form of incitement and presents an implied call for violence against Jews and Israelis.

The Anti-Defamation League, for example, rejected the company’s “short-sighted decision,” arguing the phrase “calls to dismantle Israel, including through the removal of Jews from their ancestral homeland.”

“‘From the river to the sea'” is an antisemitic charge denying the Jewish people’s right to self-determination,” the ADL posted on X/Twitter. “This rallying cry, enshrined in the charter of Hamas, has long been used by anti-Israel voices, including supporters of terrorist organizations like Hamas and PFLP [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine], which seek Israel’s destruction through violent means.”

The ADL concluded, “Usage of this phrase has the effect of making members of the Jewish and pro-Israel community feel unsafe and ostracized, and we call on Meta to recognize the harm this phrase poses to Jewish communities worldwide. This decision continues the pattern of supreme indifference to online hate and harassment that has long been the hallmark of Meta’s leadership.”

The Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) expressed similar sentiments on Wednesday.

“‘From the River to the Sea’ is a slogan created with the sole vision of destroying the national homeland of the Jewish people,” CAM CEO Sacha Roytman said in a statement. “It is genocidal in intent and meaning, and is not a legitimate political or ideological vision, because it targets the one Jewish state and its inhabitants for destruction.”

Roytman went on to argue that the Meta board “appears to have special rules for Jews and the Jewish state because they seem to always come down on the side of antisemites and give them a benefit of the doubt that they would dare not give any other racist or hate group. They have given a green light for incitement to genocide.”

The oversight board’s decision came after Meta in July removed its ban on the use of the Arabic word “shaheed,” or “martyr” in English, after a year-long review.

That same month, Meta announced an update to its moderation policy regarding posts that use the word “Zionists” as a proxy to target Jews or Israelis in hate speech. Meta said it would begin removing posts that use “Zionists” to refer to Jews and Israelis in harmful and derogatory ways.