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Protest slogans turn Israelis and Palestinians into ‘caricatures’, warns extremism expert
Dr. Carl Yonker, from the Centre for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry, warns against 'unhelpful' ban debates
One of Israel’s leading experts on antisemitic extremism has described the debate over banning pro-Palestine protests in the UK as “very unhelpful,” insisting that attention should instead be directed at the “failure of many on these demos to understand the implications of the slogans they chant.”
Dr. Carl Yonker, who manages the Centre for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry at Tel Aviv University, argued, “Some in these protests have turned both Palestinians and Israelis into pawns in their own ideological battles—cutouts and caricatures—through slogans such as ‘From the River to the Sea’ and other frequently used chants.”
Yonker discussed recent reports from his centre that revealed a dire rise in global antisemitism, including the deadly attack on British Jews at Heaton Park Synagogue last year.
But when asked by Jewish News whether inflammatory chants at protests lead directly to violent antisemitic hate crimes, Yonker responded, “I find this discussion very unhelpful. In a sense, the point gets missed.”
The academic revealed he had personally witnessed pro-Palestine demonstrations in the UK and elsewhere. “I’ve walked through those demos when I visited my family,” he said.
“You want to give the benefit of the doubt to some people who just see images from Gaza that are very hard. It touches them emotionally,” Yonker said.
“It touches me as well. I don’t want to see dead children, women, or innocents. If you’re human and have any compassion in your heart, you should feel something,” he continued.
But Yonker added, “When they join these marches, they start chanting slogans whose meaning they often can’t define.”
“‘From the river to the sea.’ Most non-Arabic speakers don’t know the second part of that slogan—’from water to water, Palestine will be Arab,'” he explained.
“Israelis know what that means on the ground. You’re going to do everything in your power to wipe us off the map. You’re coming after my family, my children, my friends’ families, their kids.”
“That’s what ‘from the river to the sea’ means.”
He continued, “Most of those people couldn’t tell you when the last election was in the Palestinian Authority—or that just a month ago, elections were postponed again.”
“Yes, Abbas is in his 20th year of a four-year term. No one understands Palestinian politics, let alone Palestinian culture,” Yonker said.
As a lecturer and Middle East scholar, Yonker noted that he works with Arab Israelis, “however they identify themselves: Palestinian, Arab, Israeli Arab, Palestinian citizens of Israel.”
“The average protester in New York, London, Berlin can’t name a Palestinian poet, musician, or author,” he added.
“They don’t engage with Palestinians as people—just as they don’t engage with us as people, as humans,” Yonker said.
“We’re cutouts, we’re caricatures. I say that at every chance I get. For me, when I talk to my friends in the States or elsewhere, it’s: please, see us—Israelis and Palestinians—as human beings.”
Jewish News travelled to Israel this week as part of a delegation organised by the Or Ofir Foundation and the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs to explore efforts to tackle antisemitism and hear first-hand from leading Israeli academics and university chiefs.
Yonker was among the speakers to attend a series of events.
The Or Ofir Foundation is a non-profit organisation established in memory of Ofir Libstein, the former head of the Sha’ar HaNegev Regional Council who was killed defending Kibbutz Kfar Aza on October 7, 2023, during the Hamas terror attacks, along with his son Nitzan.
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