How banning one Palestinian slogan roiled Etsy

Today, let’s talk about a controversial decision inside Etsy to restrict the sale of merchandise with a slogan associated with support for Palestine — and one that many people associate with violent antisemitism. Internal conversations obtained by Platformer highlight how platforms are struggling to develop clear, consistent policies related to the Israel-Palestine conflict — and to manage employees’ feelings as those policies come to light.

On November 2, at an all-company meeting known internally as a “Y’All Hands,” an Etsy employee asked why the platform had restricted sales of merchandise containing the phrase “from the river to the sea.”

It’s a complicated question.

The New York Times dates usage of the phrase to the 1960s, reflecting the desire of Palestinians to reclaim their former land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Today Palestinians and their allies use it both to express “their desire for a right of return to the towns and villages from which their families were expelled in 1948, as well as their hope for an independent Palestinian state, incorporating the West Bank, which abuts the Jordan River, and the Gaza Strip, which hugs the coastline of the Mediterranean,” write the Times’ Karoun Demirjian and Liam Stack.

At the same time, the phrase also appears in the revised 2017 platform of Hamas, the group responsible for the October 7 attacks that killed more than 1,400 Israelis. (The Times notes that the same platform also states that Hamas “could accept a Palestinian state along the borders that were in place before the 1967 war — the same borders considered under the Oslo Accords.”) The Anti-Defamation League, which fights against anti-semitism and discrimination, calls “from the river to the sea” “an antisemitic slogan” that “has the effect of making members of the Jewish and pro-Israel community feel unsafe and ostracized.”

Last week, the US House of Representatives voted 234 to 188 to censure Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), the only Palestinian-American member of Congress, citing her use of the phrase in their remarks.

As debate continues to rage over the ongoing bloodshed — more than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel’s military response began, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry — platform policy teams have been confronted with a dilemma. To one group, “from the river to the sea” represents a call for liberty, dignity, and self-determination. To another, it is interpreted as an antisemitic call to annihilate ...