Meta’s Oversight Board, an advisory body tasked with weighing in on complicated content-moderation questions on Meta’s social media platforms, decided on Wednesday that the phrase “From the River to the Sea” is not inherently antisemitic and should not result in the removal of posts that employ that language.

With the decision, the Oversight Board — which is funded by Meta but operates independently — waded into one of the most contentious questions that has dogged American institutions since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in Israel last year: Does a phrase adopted by Hamas to call for the removal of Jews from the State of Israel amount to antisemitism? 

The Anti-Defamation League calls it a “hateful phrase.” Last November, Harvard’s then-president, Claudine Gay, condemned the phrase, which had already become a frequent chant at campus anti-Israel protests. By the spring, when encampments sprung up at dozens of U.S. campuses, “From the River to the Sea” was a nearly universal slogan, despite the work of Jewish groups seeking to highlight its violent roots.

The Oversight Board acknowledged concerns about the phrase, and conceded that it has an association with the terrorist group. But in its final decision, the Oversight Board ultimately thought those considerations were not enough to deem the phrase hateful in its own right.

“While it can be understood by some as encouraging and legitimizing antisemitism and the violent elimination of Israel and its people, it is also often used as a political call for solidarity, equal rights and self-determination of the Palestinian people, and to end the war in Gaza,” the Oversight Board wrote.

The decision looked at three Facebook posts that had employed the phrase since last year. In each case, several users had reported the posts, but Meta closed the reports. The Oversight Board affirmed that decision. 

In one, a Facebook user commented on a video calling on people to “speak up” about the war in Gaza. In the comment, they wrote “FromTheRiverToTheSea” as a hashtag, as well as other hashtags, including “DefundIsrael.” In the second case, a Facebook user posted an image of watermelon slices spelling out the words “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free.” The third was a post from a Canadian organization that condemned “Zionist Israeli occupiers” and expressed support for “the Palestinian people,” ending with the phrase “From The River To The Sea.” 

The Oversight Board found that, used in these contexts, “the standalone phrase cannot be understood as a call to violence against a group based on their protected characteristics, as advocating for the exclusion of a particular group, or of supporting a designated entity – Hamas.”

“The phrase’s use by this terrorist group with explicit violent eliminationist intent and actions, does not make the phrase inherently hateful or violent,” the Oversight Board wrote in its decision. 

Removing posts that use the phrase would align “with Meta’s human rights responsibilities if the phrase had been accompanied by statements or signals calling for exclusion or violence, or legitimizing hate,” according to the decision. But simply using the phrase — despite its history and ties to Hamas — is not enough for removal. 

The Oversight Board’s decision is likely to add kindling to the already-raging debate over the phrase. “The phrase does not have a single meaning,” according to the decision, which cited reports from a wide swath of advocacy groups, including World Jewish Congress, American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, Jewish Voice for Peace and the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

“The phrase is tied to Palestinians’ aspirations for self-determination and equal rights,” the board wrote. For others, “it is an antisemitic charge denying Jewish people the right to life, self-determination and to stay in their own state, established in 1948, including through forced removal of Jewish people from Israel.”

Meta spokesperson Maayan Sarig told Jewish Insider the company “welcome[s] the board’s review of our guidance on this matter.” 

“While all of our policies are developed with safety in mind, we know they come with global challenges and we regularly seek input from experts outside Meta, including the Oversight Board,” Sarig added.

The ADL criticized the ruling, calling it “short-sighted.” The decision “continues the pattern of supreme indifference to online hate and harassment that has long been the hallmark of Meta’s leadership,” the ADL wrote in a statement. 

Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) slammed the Oversight Board in a tweet. “F*** that,” Fetterman wrote. “It’s blatant antisemitic hate speech calling for the elimination of Israel from the map.”

The Oversight Board’s decision is not the first time that Meta has plunged into rhetorical debates stemming from the Israel-Hamas war. In July, Meta updated its hate speech guidelines to declare that it will remove content linking the term “Zionist” with antisemitic tropes, calls for harm or other dehumanizing language. 

In December, the Oversight Board found that Meta had gone too far in removing some posts about the war, after not taking context into account when considering why users had shared violent content.