There are calls here in Australia to expand hate-speech legislation to include the phrase “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, which risks collapsing an already fragile distinction between speech that incites harm and speech that contests history. However, confronting the slogan may be to some, it is not, in itself, hate speech. It is a political claim about sovereignty — one rooted in a particular reading of history — and democracies should be extremely cautious about criminalising such claims.
Australian hate-speech law is rightly concerned with language that targets people for who they are and incites hostility, discrimination, or violence against them. The phrase “Palestine will be free” does none of these things on its face reading. It names no ethnic or religious group, calls for no violence, and prescribes no method by which freedom is to be achieved. What it asserts is that the population of Palestine ought to exercise sovereignty over the land in which they live. One may dispute that claim; one may find it politically naïve, historically selective, or strategically reckless. But disagreement does not convert political speech into hate speech.
Much of the argument for banning the phrase rests on inferred intent rather than expressed meaning. It is said that some people use it to imply the elimination of Israel or the expulsion of Jews. That may be true in particular contexts, but intent is not transferable by slogan. Australian law has never operated on the principle that ambiguous or contested language becomes criminal because it can be read in the worst possible way. If it did, a great deal of protest language — including speech challenging Australian sovereignty itself — would be vulnerable to prohibition.
There is also an ethical dimension that should not be ignored. Palestinian political expression has long been treated as uniquely suspect, as though asserting self-determination is acceptable for some peoples but inherently threatening when articulated by others. That asymmetry has historical roots. From the Sykes–Picot Agreement through the Mandate period and the UN partition plan, decisions about Palestine were routinely made without the consent of its Arab majority. To now criminalise the language through which Palestinians and their supporters articulate a claim to freedom risks repeating that pattern: managing the people while foreclosing their voice.
Importantly, to permit the phrase is not to endorse it. Democracies do not function by protecting only speech that aligns with official policy or settled outcomes. We allow — and rightly so — robust critique of Australia’s own history, sovereignty, and borders. We allow assertions that the existing order rests on injustice. To deny that same discursive space to Palestinians is not neutrality; it is a choice to elevate one historical settlement beyond challenge.
Hate-speech law should remain focused on preventing real harm: incitement to violence, dehumanisation, and threats to public safety. Expanding it to police historical interpretations and sovereignty claims would set a dangerous precedent. Political conflicts are not resolved by banning words. They are resolved — if at all — by allowing competing narratives to be heard, tested, and argued in the open.
Uncomfortable speech is the price of a plural democracy. The alternative is something far more corrosive.