Tech mogul Elon Musk threatened to suspend anyone who used the phrases “from the river to the sea” and “decolonization” in a post on his social media site X, which was formerly known as Twitter, on Saturday.
Musk claims that these are anti-Semitic statements that incite further hostility toward Jews.
In a previous tweet, he said that the phrase “decolonization” “necessarily implies a Jewish decolonization, thus it is unacceptable to any reasonable person.” He has since reposted that message.
“As I said earlier this week, ‘decolonization‘, ‘from the river to the sea’, and similar euphemisms necessarily imply genocide,” he added, copying the tweet.
“Clear calls for extreme violence are against our terms of service and will result in suspension.”
Palestinians use the slogan “from the river to the sea” to represent their goal of liberating occupied Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
It began in 1964 with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), led by Yasser Arafat, calling for the creation of a unified state that would include its historical territory.
This idea, however, was never adopted, and in what came to be known as the Nakba, or the “catastrophe,” over 750,000 Palestinians were forced from their homes.
The slogan highlights the Palestinian people’s fight against Israel’s atrocities while it has been occupying Palestine and affirms their right to their land.
However, the West and Israel consider the use of these terms and words to be anti-Semitic sentiments because they maintain that the country is rightly theirs according to their scriptures.
The action was taken in response to the White House’s harsh criticism of Musk for endorsing an anti-Semitic statement on Wednesday that prompted major companies to halt their X marketing.
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