Thank you. This analysis by Dahlia Scheindlin in Haaretz, February 13th discusses the arrest of the booksellers.
Here is an excerpt from the first part of this article, without links or images:
archive.ph/2025.02.13-203914/www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-02-13/ty-article/.premium/for-israelis-from-the-river-to-the-sea-is-a-reality-for-palestinians-its-a-crime/00000194-ff23-d1d7-a9d5-ff677aae0000
Analysis
For Israelis, 'From the River to the Sea' Is a Reality. For Palestinians, It's a Crime
It is nonsensical, and hypocritical, to arrest or accuse Palestinians of promoting the ideology of 'From the river to the sea,' while in Israel, school maps don't show the Green Line and the government is advancing full annexation.
The great existential threat of Palestinians against Israel is back. A children's coloring book with the title "From the River to the Sea" leaves no doubt: Palestinians want all of the land, and they want to destroy Israel. The book is incontrovertible evidence that they incite their children to this aim of destruction and therefore they must never, ever have a state of their own.
So goes widespread sentiment in Israel, following the arrest of booksellers Mahmoud and Ahmed Muna of the Educational Bookshop in Jerusalem earlier this week.
The police first accused them of selling material involving incitement to terror. But having failed to produce evidence, they later reduced their claims to "public disturbance." But lack of evidence even for that led to the brothers' release after two nights in jail rather than the eight the police had requested. Disclosure: Mahmoud is a colleague and a friend – a thoughtful, sharp, warm, sensitive and welcoming bookstore owner. Images of him and Ahmed in handcuffs are shocking.
Apparently this needs to be said again: Israeli Jews are the last people on Earth who can complain about Palestinian longing for the land from the river to the sea. The State of Israel is the mother of "river to the sea" – using graphic rather than geographic language. It is nearly impossible to find a map in any public space in Israel today, from official maps to public art and iconography, showing the Green Line that would delineate a hypothetical Palestinian state. Maps in Israel show the whole land, undivided – in effect, erasing Palestinian political and national identity.
A private collection of snapshots I've taken around the country or captured from the internet tells a story as clearly as a coloring book: a Judaica shop down the block in Tel Aviv has a blue-glass standing object for your coffee table shaped like the map of Eretz Israel – no Green Line blemish. A charging stand for electric cars in Haifa displays a map of its stations spread generously throughout the Land of Israel – a single unit from the river to the sea (thanks to my partners in this project who snapped the shot).
Every day, the newspapers print weather maps of the whole land, absent any Palestine (Haaretz is a lone exception). In Hostage Square in central Tel Aviv, citizens have filled the place with art, including a triptych of visual images in which the middle pillar bears drawings of families hugging children in the shape of the whole territory of British Mandatory Palestine. The list and the photos go on.
As for inciting children about river to sea: This is the time to recall that Israeli public schools are practically barred from using maps showing the Green Line – no Palestine there either. Israel's river-to-sea is not just the lucky kid who gets the coloring book, but every kid in an Israeli school
It is nonsensical to arrest or even accuse Palestinians of using the term without mentioning that Israelis live out their own river to sea, every day. Outsiders: If you didn't realize that Israelis view the world through Mandate Palestine-shaped glasses – check your basic understanding of the society you claim to be fighting for. It's better than exposing yourself as a hypocrite or a liar.
But bumper stickers or paperweights aren't really the problem. The problem is that Israel implements its river-to-sea vision on the only map that matters: the ground itself. River-to-sea Israel is hard at work expanding settlements and the supporting infrastructure, transferring military powers over the West Bank to civilian arms of the Israeli state, thrusting the Israeli army into Palestinian cities like Tul Karm and Jenin after helping to collapse the rule of the Palestinian Authority. Support or oppose these policies – but tell the truth.