If someone at Harvard was publicly advocating for killing black people, I have no doubt that they would be immediately expelled. So freedom of speech doesn't apply here.
The only reason people say “All Lives Matter” as a response to “Black Lives Matter” is to void or nullify the latter statement, and as such a very obvious dog whistle for something which is hate speech.
That said, I stand by what I said that most of the time it is being used in the latter case. Wikipedia has an article about the latter case, not the former. Searching the term in any search engine will have you scroll very far down before you see it outside the context of BLM.
Wikipedia seems to agree with my assessment:
> All Lives Matter is a slogan that was created as a negative response to the Black Lives Matter movement. It is a conservative rejection of the acknowledgement of police brutality and ethnic violence that is the purpose of the Black Lives Matter movement.
> "From the river to the sea" (Arabic: من النهر إلى البحر, romanized: min an-nahr ʾilā l-baḥr; Palestinian Arabic: من المية للمية, romanized: min il-ṃayye la-l-ṃayye, lit. 'from the water to the water') is a political slogan that refers geographically to the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, an area described as Palestine, which today includes Israel and the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, including the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.
> Palestinian progressives use the phrase to call for a united democracy over the whole territory while others say "it's a call for peace and equality after ... decades-long, open-ended Israeli military rule over millions of Palestinians."
Even the Hamas charter is pretty explicit about what it means (where the context is obvious):
> Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea [...] along the lines of the 4th of June 1967
>> "From the river to the sea" (Arabic: من النهر إلى البحر, romanized: min an-nahr ʾilā l-baḥr; Palestinian Arabic: من المية للمية, romanized: min il-ṃayye la-l-ṃayye, lit. 'from the water to the water') is a political slogan that refers geographically to the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, an area described as Palestine, which today includes Israel and the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, including the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.
I can think of opposite interpretations of both examples. For instance, "all lives matter" is to be taken literally to be an inclusive declaration of equal treatment under the law, or "from the river to the sea" calls for ejection of jews from region. How do you arbitrate between them, without relying on an authority like wikipedia?
They mean something different, so they say something different, and keep refuting loudly and repeatedly the baseless accusations of antisemitism lobbed at them by those who want to silence their message by policing the language used to communicate it.
Yes it is. Lots of people in the current wave of demonstrations have been using the Arabic version.
The difference here is that those are all pretty young students, and have no control over any policy, while Netanyahu is the Prime minister of a country at trial for Genocide.
And while this variation of the phrase is definitely nationalistic, in the context of Palestine being colonized by a non-arab population it is probably more in line with “Colonizers go home” as opposed “No Jews allowed”, after all there are Jewish Arabs too.
And finally these very same protesters were sprayed with skunk water at the very same demonstration[1]. That really shows how the powerdynamic actually aligns and who is actually at risk.
[1]: https://twitter.com/ColumbiaSJP/status/1748729253770698944
Colonized? Jews are the indigenous people of the region. Arabs are the colonizers.
> there are Jewish Arabs too.
Not any who identify as Jewish Arabs, no: https://k-larevue.com/en/arab-jews-another-arab-denial/, https://www.jimena.org/who-is-an-arab-jew/
Have you ever heard Arabic speakers at a demonstration chant “فلسطين عربية” or “فلسطين إسلامية”?
What you did was open my own wikipedia source, scroll down to the Variations section and found this old variation there.
However if you open the original source[1] which claimed this historic use of the slogan, it specifically states that some people remember it being this way during the first intifada (1987-1993). This same source also says:
> It is true that a state of Palestine would entail the end of Israel as a Jewish ethnic-national state. But as many Palestinian and Israeli intellectuals (and others) have noted: replacing Israel with a Palestinian state need not result in genocide or the ethnic cleansing of Jews.
This article also raises an important point:
> If one of our goals is to move Jewish American audiences, we need to recognize that the Israeli state and its allies have found it easy to weaponize this particular slogan in order to incite fear among Jews.
I recommend you read this article, it is quite brilliant.
1: https://mondoweiss.net/2023/11/on-the-history-meaning-and-po...
Yes, during the current wave of violence and demonstrations.
> Friends and activists I have asked remember this phrase being used during the Oslo era, when it was adapted and developed as part of a critique of and complaint against a Palestinian leadership from Tunis that surrendered claims over historic Palestine. At some point, the phrase became the rhyming couplet that it is today: “Min al-nahr ila al-bahr / Filastin satatharrar” (“from the river to the sea / Palestine will be free”). It is this version—with its focus on freedom—that has circulated within English-language solidarity culture from at least the 1990s.
> For instance, some variants promote an Arab nationalist frame (“Palestine is Arab”), and others propose an Islamist frame (“Palestine is Islamic”). In contrast, the current version [emphasis mine] (“Palestine will be free”) expresses an open-ended but emphatic aspiration for liberation—this has allowed it to resonate with other freedom struggles.
Now I did find material for the Arab nationalist variation, including a rather catchy protest song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldX9UEVJo0g). I don’t speak arabic so it is possible that the older variation is still used and discussed on the arabic speaking web, however I’m not finding it at all on the English speaking web, I can only find it being discussed in the historical context.