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← The 1977 Platform

The Slogan Banned for Others, Written into Likud's Platform

After October 2023, the chant "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" became one of the most policed sentences in the Western world. Members of Congress were censured over it, platforms threatened to suspend users for it, and an Australian state moved to outlaw it. The same geography, with the opposite owner, sits in the founding platform of Israel's ruling party and in the mouths of its leaders. This page shows the two side by side, because an American family cannot understand whose sovereignty its government is defending until it sees both.

Who said the land "between the river and the sea" belongs to one side​

  • Likud, 1977: "between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty" (Jewish Virtual Library).
  • Naftali Bennett, former prime minister, 29 October 2023: "Between the River and the Sea…is Israel," posting a map to more than 829,000 viewers (Naftali Bennett on X).
  • Uri Ariel, then a minister, 2014: "Between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea there will be only one state, which is Israel"; Gideon Saar, now foreign minister, 2020: "Between the Jordan River and the sea there won't be another independent state" (JTA, 8 November 2023).
  • Uri Ariel, 2016: "Between the river and the sea will only be the State of Israel. There are not two states west of the Jordan. And the Temple Mount is ours!" (DAWN, 27 September 2024).
  • An unnamed Israeli minister to Sky News, December 2023: "We live here, this is our country. The historical estate of our ancestors. There will be no Palestinian state here. We will never allow another state to be established between the Jordan & the sea" (Mark Stone on X, 12 December 2023), seen more than 1.3 million times.
  • Benjamin Netanyahu, January 2024: "In any future settlement, Israel must control all the territory west of the Jordan River," rendered in one translation as control of "the entire area from the river to the sea" (Snopes, 19 January 2024). In June 2026 the commentator Cenk Uygur posted a clip he described as "Netanyahu saying from the river to the sea" to more than 309,000 viewers (Cenk Uygur on X, 29 June 2026).

Who was punished for the other version​

  • Congress. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian member of Congress, was censured in November 2023 after the phrase was used (JTA). In April 2024, as the activist Mick Napier put it, Congress "voted to criminalise the sentence 'From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!' but exempted Israel's ruling #Likud party platform" (Mick Napier on X, 18 April 2024).
  • X. On 17 November 2023 Elon Musk wrote that "'from the river to the sea' and similar euphemisms necessarily imply genocide" and that such calls "will result in suspension," a post seen 68 million times (Elon Musk on X). The activist Majid Freeman asked Musk the obvious question: "do you say the same about the Likud Party charter & will you ban Likud politicians from Twitter / x?" (Majid Freeman on X, 18 November 2023).
  • CNN. On 19 April 2026 Jake Tapper asked Rep. Elise Stefanik, "Is calling for wiping out an entire civilization bad or good?" The activist Cameron Kasky answered on X that the slogan "is actually a core tenet of the ruling party in Israel. The Likud Party charter asserts Jewish, sovereign right over the entire land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea" (Cameron Kasky on X, 19 April 2026). In February 2026 he put it more simply: "For the State of Israel, it is a policy plan for dominion" (Cameron Kasky on X, 16 February 2026).
  • Australia. In February 2026 Queensland moved to outlaw the phrase. Kenneth Roth, former director of Human Rights Watch, asked: "Would Queensland outlaw Likud, or is there an Israel exception to the proposed hate speech law?" (Kenneth Roth on X, 10 February 2026).

What the double standard reveals​

The American historian Zachary Foster summed it up: "if you say, 'between the river & the sea, there will be only Jewish sovereignty,' (Likud Charter) you get $3.8B/yr in military aid from the US. if you say, 'between the river & the sea, Palestine will be free,' you are censured from congress, fired from CNN or banned from X" (Zachary Foster on X, 20 November 2023).

Noam Chomsky made the same point in 2014 on Democracy Now: "There are charters that mean something, but they're not talked about. So, for example, the electoral program of Israel's governing party, Likud, states explicitly that there can never be a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River. And they not only state it in their charter, that's a call for the destruction of Palestine, explicit call for it. And they don't only have it in their charter, you know, their electoral program, but they implement it" (Democracy Now, 8 August 2014, as quoted in Yodysseus on X).

That last sentence is the heart of it. One version of the slogan is a chant at protests. The other is a platform that has governed, and it has been carried out: see Settlements: The Part of Greater Israel Already Being Built. Understanding why a people's own government would police one version and fund the other is the question Plato's cave asks.

Status: Naftali Bennett, Uri Ariel, Gideon Saar, Benjamin Netanyahu, Rashida Tlaib, Elon Musk, Jake Tapper, Elise Stefanik, Cameron Kasky, Kenneth Roth, Zachary Foster, Noam Chomsky, Cenk Uygur, Mick Napier, and Majid Freeman are alive. Nothing on this page states that any of them committed a crime.

Sources​

Last Updated: 2026-09-26

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