Israel-Gaza: DUP MLA says 'from the river to the sea' chant should not be tolerated as UK Home Secretary signals need for a crackdown

Edwin Poots, a former health, farming, culture and environment minister, who briefly led the party in mid-2021, was speaking to the News Letter after Home Secretary Suella Braverman issued what may be the strongest statement yet from the UK government that the words of the chant are unacceptable and bordering on criminal.

The chant has been heard many times in the last week-and-a-half at rallies in Londonderry, Belfast, Dublin, and elsewhere.

The People Before Profit MLA Gerry Carroll tweeted out the words on October 9, two days after the Hamas attack on Israel, along with an assertion that Palestine has a “right to resist”.

He has defended the words, saying they do not constitute “a racist slogan or chant” and it is “shocking” to suggest otherwise.

At the outset of the renewed conflict, Suella Braverman had written to police chiefs (it has since transpired the letter went only to the police top brass in England and Wales) saying: “I would encourage police to consider whether chants such as ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ should be understood as an expression of a violent desire to see Israel erased from the world, and whether its use in certain contexts may amount to a racially aggravated section 5 public order offence.”

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Then on Monday night, she wrote this on Twitter: “Last weekend an intimidating mob marched through London chanting ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ - a slogan that is widely understood as a demand for the destruction of Israel. Attempts to pretend otherwise are disingenuous.

"It means the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea- the boundaries of Israel - and comes from the dark days when most Palestinian groups sought to eliminate Israel. It was dropped by mainstream organisations after Israel and the PLO made peace with the 1993 Oslo Accords.

"The slogan was taken up by Islamists, including Hamas, and remains a staple of antisemitic discourse.

"To hear it shouted in public causes alarm not just to Jews but to all decent people. Those who promote hate on Britain’s streets should realise that our tolerance has limits.”

Edwin Poots – who in his 20s backpacked across the Holy Land including Israel, the West Bank, and the Bedouin-dominated Sinai – told the News Letter: “She's 100% – she's absolutely spot on. That sort of language shouldn't be tolerated.”

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He also said: “People who are misbehaving in NI should be pursued by the PSNI.

"Certainly people who are using that language, that's the language of extermination. ‘From the river to the sea’ is moving an entire people group out of the country they live in.

"You have to go back to what Hamas' raison d’etre is, and that's to eliminate Jewish people from the land that's currently Israel.

"Jewish feet have been on those grounds for over 3,000 years and been driven from it a number of times.

"From the late 1800s on a lot of that land was actually acquired from wealthy Arabs who actually owned it – it wasn't land that was stolen off people, a lot of it was bought.

"A lot of that land was in an infertile state when it was bought and a massive effort has been made to irrigate it and actually make it useable land.

"This notion you can just take that off people and remove them from that land is utter nonsense, it's not going to happen.

"If people were saying 'we need to drive the Palestinians from the West Bank to the sea, or from Gaza into the sea,' there would be huge complaints about that.

"Hamas have made it clear they don't want Israel to exist as a nation, full stop. So what does ‘from the river to the sea’ mean if that's not what they're talking about?

"They're dancing on the head of a pin to try and excuse themselves. It's quite evident what it means.”