Why is the slogan ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ so controversial?

“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” This clarion call for an end to the oppression of the Palestinians echoes around the streets of our cities every weekend. Tens of thousands raise their voices in hope for a state in historic Palestine where people of all religions, or no religion, live together in peace with equal rights.

Yet universities around Australia that claim to stand for freedom of speech and equal rights for all are, one after another, banning this slogan on campuses. They claim it makes Jewish students feel threatened. Likewise, a motion in the federal Senate that condemned the slogan and asserted that those who use it “seek to intimidate Jewish Australians via acts of antisemitism” was carried 56 votes to 12. And Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is on the record agreeing with former Defence Department secretary Dennis Richardson that the slogan is “very violent” and with former Liberal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg that it has “no place on our streets”.

So why do backers of Israel denounce a slogan calling for freedom and equal rights? And why do they not rail against openly genocidal remarks made by Israeli government ministers, or against the unspeakable atrocities being committed by Israel in Gaza? To unravel this conundrum, it’s not enough just to note their hypocrisy. We have to go back to the fundamentals.

The ideology of Zionism rejects the possibility of Jews and non-Jews living together peacefully. This misanthropic ideology is the linchpin of support for a Jewish state. Sanctified by the UN, brute force and terrorism drove out 750,000 Palestinians in 1948 to make way for Israel. Gaza is but the latest example of the continuing horrendous genocidal war on the Palestinians.

Defence of Israel relies on a twisted logic. Zionists conflate Judaism with the ideology of Zionism, in spite of the existence of many anti-Zionist Jews. Accordingly, Zionists insist that any opposition to Israel is an attack not on a marauding state, but on the Jewish people as a whole. They can interpret hostility to the ethno-state of Israel only as opposition to the very existence of Jews on that land.

But the visceral response to the slogan by the political class can’t be explained just by that ideology. It is made an imperative by the material reality of imperialism.

Israel is America’s bulldog to protect its imperialist interests in this oil-rich, strategic region. So to be accepted in respectable circles in Australia, let alone as prime minister of this loyal ally of the US, virtually uncritical support for Israel is a non-negotiable condition. This means defence of the morally indefensible and a commitment to silencing any voice raised against Israel’s atrocities. Hence the outlawing and condemnation of this slogan and increasing repression of Palestinians and their supporters.

This explains why Albanese has not raised a word against the truly genocidal threat included in the 1977 platform of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party. “Between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty”, it declares. Daniella Weiss, one of the Israeli settlers committed to realising that goal, spoke to the New Yorker last November, outlining the settlers’ rejection of any rights for Palestinians living in Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem. Their vision invokes ethnic cleansing and genocide of Arabs to enable the Jewish ethno-state to stretch from the Euphrates River to the Nile in the south-west. This, encompassing much more than historic Palestine, they claim as the “homeland of the Jews”.

Support for these reactionary ideas has meant, from the earliest days of Israel’s existence, a repugnant indifference to the oppression of the Palestinians. Referred to as “animals” and other racist terms that dehumanise them, Palestinians are regarded as nothing but an obstacle to Israel’s right to the land of much of the Middle East.

The movement to support the Palestinians and defend them from genocide generates a vision of human solidarity that is common to all movements for the rights of oppressed peoples. It aspires to freedom—something supporters of the barbarity of capitalism, its imperialist wars and consequently of Israel, cannot countenance.

It has been clear from 1948 that the existence of the highly militarised, expansionist and aggressive state of Israel backed by the Western powers is incompatible with anything approaching human freedom in the Middle East. “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!”, when raised by pro-Palestinian activists, flows from and strengthens a belief in the possibility of liberation even up against such an intimidating adversary. That’s why it must be vigorously defended.