Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania is the latest to slam Meta’s Oversight Board’s ruling on Wednesday that “from the river to the sea” is not hate speech – despite Hamas using it to call for the destruction of Israel.
Meta’s independent board – which CEO Mark Zuckerberg created in 2019 as a third-party check on the company – ruled on Wednesday that users of its Facebook and Instagram apps can continue to use the controversial rally slogan.
“F–k that,” Fetterman posted on X. “It’s blatant antisemitic hate speech calling for the elimination of Israel from the map.”
“From the river to the sea” has been frequently invoked during pro-Palestinian protests since the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas and Israel’s subsequent bombardment of the Gaza strip.
The Pennsylvania senator has been one of the most vocal elected Democratic officials in support of Israel.
While he has said it is “very American” to protest in the “appropriate way,” he slammed disruptive pro-Palestinian protests that have erupted across the country on college campuses and outside businesses.
“It is not appropriate or legal or helpful to advance your argument if you show up in a Starbucks with a bullhorn and start yelling at people,” Fetterman previously told Fox News Digital.
He claimed such protests don’t “make you noble” – “it just makes you an a–hole.”
Fetterman has criticized activists calling for a cease-fire in Gaza and instead pushed for the release of the hostages held in Gaza.
“I am not going to be in a position to tell Israel what it should do. That’s their choice,” he said.
Jewish groups reacted with outrage at the oversight board’s ruling, calling it “short-sighted” and “ill-informed” and warning it will worsen “visceral hate” against Jews.
Meta’s board “failed to recognize that ‘from the River to the Sea,’ which is part of the Hamas Terrorist Organization’s Charter, is inherently genocidal and antisemitic and should constitute hate speech,” the World Jewish Congress said.
The Anti-Defamation League said it disagreed with the board’s decision and that the phrase is inherently antisemitic.
The chant has dominated congressional hearings as Jewish college students have begged lawmakers to hold universities accountable for a massive spike in antisemitism.
Meanwhile, hate incidents have spiked across the country.
The ADL has reported a 337% increase in antisemitic incidents in the US since Hamas terrorists killed 1,200 people in Israel.
Complaints of anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian discrimination and hate also spiked, rising 178% in the months after Oct. 7, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Meta’s 21-member board looked at three cases in which users reported posts using the phrase and ruled that the posts did not break Meta’s hate speech rules because they did not explicitly call for violence against Jewish or Israeli people.
The board said the three posts used the phrase with “contextual signals of solidarity with Palestinians.”
“Because the phrase does not have a single meaning, a blanket ban on content that includes the phrase, a default rule towards removal of such content, or even using it as a signal to trigger enforcement or review, would hinder protected political speech in unacceptable ways,” the board ruled.
Some social media users have claimed the ruling is a safeguarding of free speech.
But Jewish and Israeli advocates have bashed the free speech argument as hypocritical, since Meta has previously blocked other forms of speech.
The social media giant suspended former president Donald Trump’s accounts after the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riots.
Zuckerberg recently admitted the company censored COVID-19 content after pressure from the Biden administration and squashed The Post’s coverage of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal.
