Hamas Leader Says Students Chanting ‘From the River To the Sea’ Is Proof of Western Support for the Destruction of Israel
Mr. Meshal’s statement contradicts assertions by some Western activists that the six words roiling so many American campuses is actually a call for peace.
A leader of the Hamas terrorists living outside Israel, Khaled Mashal, told a Kuwaiti interviewer that European and American students chanting “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free” during their anti-Israel protests is evidence that the world supports Hamas’ goal of wiping Israel off the map once and for all.
In the interview, released by podcaster Amar Taki last week and translated by the anti-Islamist Middle East Media Research Institute, Mr. Mashal rejected the idea of a two-state solution in Israel and said that the attacks of October 7 have renewed the dreams of Palestinians hoping to rid the Levant of Jews and reclaim the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea that now makes up Israel.
“We have nothing to do with the two-state solution,” Mr. Meshal said. “We reject this notion, because it means you would get a promise for a [Palestinian] state, yet you are required to recognize the legitimacy of the other state, which is the Zionist entity. This is unacceptable. We demand to be liberated, to get rid of the occupation, and to have our independence, and our state.”
During the interview, Mr. Meshal boasted that even students on Western campuses are now supporting the goal set out by Hamas and other terrorist organizations in Israel.
“The position of Hamas, and the position of the vast majority of the Palestinian people, especially following October 7, I believe that the dream and the hope for Palestine from the River to the Sea, and from the north to the south, has been renewed,” he said. “This has also become a slogan chanted in the U.S., and in western capital cities, by the American and Western public. ‘Palestine from the River to the Sea’ — that’s the slogan of American students, and the [students] in European capital cities.”
Mr. Meshal’s statement contradicts assertions by some Western Palestinian activists that the six words roiling so many American campuses — “From the River to the Sea” — is a call for peace following 75 years of conflict in the region. Israel and its supporters have long claimed that the slogan is actually a call for the destruction of Israel and expulsion of Jews from their homeland.
