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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   25779 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 4, 2023

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That ambiguity is why it’s necessary to inform kind-minded people that the Arabic translation is “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be Arab.” It rhymes because good propaganda has rhetorical power.

Can you give a cite for this?

From Wikipedia, who I do not trust:

The concept of 'from the river to the sea' has appeared in various protest chants, typically as the first line of a rhyming couplet.

In Arabic The version min an-nahr 'ilā l-baḥr / Filasṭīn satatḥarrar (من النهر إلى البحر / فلسطين ستتحرر 'from the river to the sea / Palestine will be free') has a focus on freedom.[30]

The version min al-mayyeh lil-mayyeh / Filasṭīn ʿarabiyyeh (من المياه للمياه / فلسطين عربية 'from the water to the water / Palestine [is] Arab') has an Arab nationalist sentiment, and the version min al-mayyeh lil-mayyeh / Filasṭīn Islamiyyeh (من المياه للمياه / فلسطين إسلامية 'from the water to the water / Palestine [is] Islamic') has Islamic sentiment.[31] According to Colla, scholars of Palestine attest to the documentation of both versions in the graffiti of the late 1980s, the period of the First Intifada.[31]

In English 'From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free'—the translation of min an-nahr 'ilā l-baḥr / Filasṭīn satatḥarrar—is the version that has circulated among English speakers expressing solidarity with Palestine since at least the 1990s.[31]

...So it sounds like different people use different versions, of which one actually is "shall be free".

I’ll cite that Wikipedia article. There are three basic recorded variations, one ends with “Palestine will be Islamic”, the other says “Palestine will be Arabic”. Only the third one talks about freedom.

Mine was never a strong point to begin with, but it is an important one to give context.

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