Meta content court rules ‘from the river to the sea’ isn’t hate speech

Meta’s company-funded oversight body ruled Wednesday that the social media giant shouldn’t automatically take down posts using the phrase “from the river to the sea,” a decades-old rallying cry for Palestinian nationalism that has reignited a national debate about the boundaries of acceptable speech.

Meta’s Oversight Board, an independent collection of academics, experts and lawyers who oversee thorny content decisions on the platform, said posts they examined using the phrase didn’t violate the company’s rules against hate speech, inciting violence or praising dangerous organizations.

“While [the phrase] can be understood by some as encouraging and legitimizing antisemitism and the violent elimination of Israel and its people, it is also often used as a political call for solidarity, equal rights and self-determination of the Palestinian people, and to end the war in Gaza,” the board said in its ruling.

Meta spokesman Corey Chambliss said in a statement that it welcomes the board’s review. “While all of our policies are developed with safety in mind, we know they come with global challenges and we regularly seek input from experts outside Meta, including the Oversight Board,” he said.

The political clash over the Israel-Gaza war has forced the company to closely examine the line between supporting free expression and suppressing dangerous hate speech online, and Wednesday’s ruling may fuel tensions.

Some Jewish groups have accused the social media giant of allowing antisemitism to surge on its networks in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel that ignited the war.

Meta has also been lambasted by digital rights activists and pro-Palestinian groups, who say it has stifled legitimate political critiques of the Israeli government and its armed forces during a war that has claimed more than 40,000 Palestinian lives, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, and displaced much of the region.

Activists and pro-Palestinian demonstrators have used the phrase “from the river to the sea” to express their support for Palestinians in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The slogan, which is often followed by the phrase “Palestine will be free,” refers to the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea including the state of Israel. But others have interpreted the phrase as a call to eradicate Israel, with some Jewish American organizations arguing that the phrase amounts to antisemitism.

According to the board, the posts don’t specifically attack Jewish or Israeli people “with calls for violence or exclusion,” putting them outside the company’s definition of hate speech. The board also said the cases didn’t break the company’s rules against inciting violence or praising dangerous organizations or individuals because they don’t glorify Hamas or its actions. Rather, the selected cases show that the phrase was being used in solidarity with Palestinians, the board argued.

A minority of the board disagreed with the decision.

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