A Free Grammar Lesson for Free Palestine

An explanation of the grammatical obfuscation of "Free Palestine" and other antizionist chants

Perhaps the greatest casualty of the culture war has been the cognitive ability of Gen Z. The advent and onslaught of social media happened contemporaneously with the disintegration of American schools. 

Caught between the rock of our public education system and the hard place of our toxic public discourse, Gen Z never learned how to think. Most of us were deprived of the basic tools of critical thinking and cognition. Very few people in my generation learned things like grammar and logical reasoning because it wasn’t in the budget, or it wasn’t being tested by the state, and nowhere is the disastrous effect of this deprivation clearer than in the “Free Palestine” movement. 

So, I will offer everyone in my generation a free grammar lesson in the hopes that it will explain why this particular movement is so unbelievably divisive and dangerous.  

The basic grammatical structure of an English sentence is: 

Subject + Verb + Object.

Example: I made a mistake.

The verb is the action word in the sentence. In this example, it is “made.” 

The subject is the noun in the sentence which does the action. In this case, it is “I.” 

The object is the noun in the sentence which the action is being done to. Here, “a mistake.” 

The benefit of this structure is that it is extremely clear. That’s why we say that sentences spoken with this grammatical structure are “declarative sentences.” They declare who is doing the action. 

The drawback of this structure is also that it is extremely clear. When I make a mistake, I rarely want to declare my mistake to the whole world. 

Luckily, there is another voice we can use to obfuscate responsibility. 

Here is President Bush’s classic example:

Mistakes were made.

…

By whom? Mistakes were made… by whom? 

This structure is called the “Passive Voice” because it hides the real action of the sentence. 

The grammatical structure of the Passive Voice is: 

Object + “To Be” Verb + Past Participle (subject hidden in implied “by phrase”). 

The Passive Voice always gives students trouble. 

Every sentence written or spoken in the passive voice includes an implied “by ____________” at the end of it. 

In our example, it looks like this: 

Mistakes were made (BY ME). 

Object = Mistakes

“To Be” verb = Were

Past Participle = Made  

By using the Passive Voice, we have buried the true subject of our sentence, thus making it difficult (if not impossible) to ascertain who truly did the action of the sentence. 

In this example, the President could have been the one to make the mistakes, or it could have been his staff, or it could have been their staff, and so on and so forth until no one knows who really made the mistakes after all. 

But how does this relate to Free Palestine? 

The most objectionable demand of the Free Palestine Movement has been for the right to chant “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free.”   

Hundreds of university professors and thousands of university students claim that this chant does not represent a call for genocide against Jews. The historical origins of the phrase, I have been told, must not be considered when evaluating the legitimacy of it in the present.

In order for a statement to be considered illegitimate speech, it must constitute either incitement or defamation. 

If this chant were a declarative call for Jewish genocide, university presidents and public officials would have to denounce it because there would be no question as to the sentence’s meaning. 

Example: 

“From the River to the Sea, killing Jews will set Palestine Free.” 

However, the chanters have buried the true subject of their chant by using the Passive Voice, thus making it both possible and easy to dismiss any accusations of incitement. 

And look at how effective the chanters have been. By never making Declarative statements, they ensure that they can never be challenged.

Harvard’s President can confidently claim that she needs context before she can evaluate whether or not this chant constitutes a call for Jewish genocide because, simply, SHE DOES. We all do. We all need context to understand what this chant means because the chant itself is intentionally vague. 

(If you are interested in seeing the whole slew of chants, you can find them here. “Within Our Lifetime” offers Free Palestine supporters a whole toolkit filled with propaganda to blindly parrot. There are about 40 chants, and I believe that about a third of them use the Passive Voice and another third are open calls for violence against Jews in Israel. But the whole website basically offers a template for these protests, which may explain why they all look and sound almost identical)

But, leaving the other chants aside, here is just a short list of possible implied “By Statements” for: From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free…

• By open and honest dialogue 

• By any means necessary 

• By force

• By Hamas

• By poetry

• Not by might, and not by power, but by spirit alone 

These are just a few possibilities. 

If 10,000 students at Harvard, or Penn, or Columbia are chanting this, how many or them do we think are actually calling for Jewish genocide, versus how many of them just don’t know how the Passive Voice works? 

Either way, our universities have an obligation to teach their way out of this. Education is the solution to ignorance. The Ivy League, and really all of American academia in general, has claimed that the ignorance of their students is the reason for their chanting this phrase. 

Very well, if that is the case, and Harvard has a $30 Billion endowment, surely they can find the money for remedial grammar classes for their student body. As I am sure that the Harvard donors do not want their Alma Mater to continue to produce students who cannot use basic English. 

Unfortunately, the Passive Voice is not the Free Palestine Movement’s only grammatical problem. There’s a problem with the phrase “Free Palestine” itself. 

When I ask my students what the subject of that sentence is, they always say “Palestine.” They see two words, one of them is a noun, so, logically, the noun must be the subject. 

But when they say “subject,” they do not mean the grammatical subject; they mean the intellectual topic. 

The topic of “Free Palestine” is Palestine, but the subject of “Free Palestine,” the one who is doing the freeing of Palestine, is you. 

According to this chant, you, the listener, are the one who must Free Palestine. 

This grammatical structure is called the “Imperative Voice.” People generally use the Imperative Voice to give commands, or “imperatives.” It is most commonly used by parents. 

Example: 

Clean this room!

Verb = Clean

Object = this room 

Implied Subject = (You)

Generally, the subject of the Imperative Voice, while not verbalized, is usually made clear through context (there is that word again…).  The person being yelled at is the “You” that is meant by the speaker. 

However, every educator and parent knows that a clever child can often get around this. 

For instance, last week, my classroom was messy, and I told my students “Clean this room before class starts.” 

Now, I had made the mistake of teaching them about the Imperative Voice the day before. When I got back, no one had moved a muscle. 

“Ah but Mr. Goldstein,” Reuven said, “you said, ‘clean this room,’ and I could tell by your energy that you meant ‘You, SHIMON, clean this room.’”

Of course, Shimon said the same, and Levi, and all of the other students, and they all had a great laugh. 

Luckily, I was able to rectify this issue with a strong use of the Declarative Voice:

“You will all make this room spotless, or you will all have a Pop Quiz.” 

Clarity from educators goes a long way with students. 

The great irony of “Free Palestine” is that, by chanting that expression, the chanter is actually removing themselves from the responsibility of freeing Palestine. 

The subject of “Free Palestine” could be anybody: 

• Israel

• The US government 

• The Jews 

• Hamas 

• Travis Kelce

But there is only one person who could not be the subject of “Free Palestine,” and that is the “I.” 

“Free Palestine” is the easiest social movement to be a part of because it requires 0 commitment and effort from the participant. 

In fact, by chanting “Free Palestine,” they are essentially making this statement: 

“Join us or we will make it your responsibility to free Palestine.” 

The perspective of “Free Palestine” is second-person; it seeks to force the responsibility of Palestinian liberation onto the Israeli state, thereby absolving the Palestinian people and their allies of any responsibility. 

Compare that with the American Civil Rights movement, as so many antizionists often do. The primary chant of the Civil Rights Movement was: “We shall overcome.” 

We, the chanters, not you, the listener. We shall be the ones to overcome segregation. 

Conceptually, the Civil Rights Movement cast American racism as the problem and civil rights as the solution. 

Alternatively, the Free Palestine Movements casts Israel as the problem while simultaneously demanding that Israel provide the solution. 

You can see this anywhere you look. Not one cease-fire advocate criticized Hamas for breaking the cease fire. Not one Arab country offered to take in Palestinian refugees. Not one Antizionist has proposed a solution to the conflict other than “Intifada Revolution.” 

The people who gave their time to march in the Civil Rights Movement also gave their time to educating black children. The Black Panthers fed black families. Donors raised money to bail black students out of jail. 

But there are no Antizionist philanthropists. There are no pro-Palestine donations going towards building schools.

Everyone knows that all of the foreign support for Palestine goes straight to Hamas, and no one in the “Free Palestine” movement bats an eye because no one feels responsible. 

By almost exclusively using the Passive and Imperative Voices, the Free Palestine movement has constructed an impregnable rhetorical fortress. The only way they could possibly be defeated is in open debate, which is why you have never seen an antizionist defend their position in public. 

Ultimately, it is sad more than anything else. It’s sad for the Palestinian people who have been getting nothing but lip-service for two decades from their alleged allies. American antizionists have done more to hurt Jews in America than they have to help Palestinians in Gaza. 

The only solution to ignorance is education. There must be a reckoning in our schools. They must reckon with just how ignorant their students are and just how poorly they are doing at educating them. Otherwise, they will continue producing ignorant graduates who chant slogans they do not understand.