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Moderation panel says blanket ban on phrase would ‘hinder protected political speech’
Facebook posts containing the phrase “from the river to the sea” did not always glorify Hamas and should be allowed to remain online, the company’s oversight board has ruled.
The body – which includes Alan Rusbridger, the former Guardian editor – said the slogan should not be “automatically removed” by technology giant Meta’s moderators.
Hate speech campaigners have condemned the slogan – a shortened version of “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” – as anti-Semitic because they claimed it implied the destruction of the state of Israel. “From the river to the sea” has been adopted by Hamas and is used in the terror group’s official charter.
However, the Facebook panel, whose members also include Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the former prime minister of Denmark, said the phrase “by itself and regardless of context” should not necessarily be “understood as harmful, violent or discriminatory”.
Pamela San Martin, the board’s co-chairman, said: “There has been an unacceptable and deeply disturbing rise in anti-Semitism and Islamophobia on and offline. But context is crucial. Simply removing political speech is not a solution. There needs to be room for debate, especially during times of crisis.”
The board ruled that three posts which had included the phrase should not be taken down and did “not glorify Hamas”.
Users had appealed to the oversight board after Meta originally refused to remove the posts. One of the posts condemned the “senseless slaughter” in Gaza by the “Zionist state of Israel”.
In its decision, the board said while the phrase “can be understood by some as encouraging and legitimising anti-Semitism 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 added that since the phrase had different meanings in different contexts, a blanket ban would “hinder protected political speech in unacceptable ways”.
While the majority of the board ruled Meta had acted correctly, a minority of its members argued the technology giant should “adopt a default rule presuming the phrase constitutes glorification” of Hamas or its massacre of Israelis on Oct 7. The votes of individual members were not disclosed.
Meta included Hamas on a list of dangerous organisations in its moderation rules. It upgraded Hamas to a “tier one” group in December, barring praise and legitimisation of the terror organisation.