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The fact that your and my interpretation of the modal meaning of "from the river to the sea" when chanted by American college students is so divergent points to
by drawkward 3y ago
The fact that your and my interpretation of the modal meaning of "from the river to the sea" when chanted by American college students is so divergent points to the problem with "assuming the worst."
I agree that the phrase is poisonous, but I don't ascribe genocidal intent to the hypothetical modal speaker of it without knowing exactly who that speaker is. Consider it from a Bayesian standpoint: even if you test positive for a rare condition, the likelihood is overwhelming that the positive is a result of test error, and not actually having the underlying condition. Supporting genocide is exceedingly rare, thus is it not likely that someone who uses the phrase "from the river to the sea" should have the worst assumed about them. Perhaps your prior belief is different, and you think that support for genocide is common?
- tptacek 3y agoI think I have two things to contribute to this thread: 1. The observation, after going and looking it up a week ago, that the slogan is associated with not just Hezbollah and Hamas but also the Kahanists. 2. The observation that people of good will have and continue to a "decolonization" narrative that posits the dispossession of Israeli Jewish people as a kind of restorative justice, based on the terribly broken premise that Israeli Jewish people are all descendants of settler colonists. They largely are not that, and advocacy for blanket dispossession for those people can reasonably be seen as genocidal. Israelis are not moving back to Yemen.