The U.S. Trade Patent and Trademark Office has received two applications to trademark the phrase “from the river to the sea” to use on hats and shirts.
The applications’ signatories are named in the documents as Joel Ackerman for the November 17 application and Oron Rosenkrantz for the November 8 filing, according to the patent office and Rosenkrantz. Both applications are “awaiting assignment to an examining attorney,” according to the patent office.
The phrase has become contentious as the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has escalated after the Gaza-based Hamas militant group attacked Israel on October 7, leading to 1,200 deaths, according to the Associated Press. The Israeli military’s response has led to the deaths of more than 13,000 Palestinians, according to AP.
Newsweek reached out to Ackerman, Rosenkrantz and the U.S. Trade Patent and Trademark Office via email on Thursday for comment.
Some experts questioned the move to patent the phrase.
“It could backfire, and eventually all kinds of people we don’t want to wear hats and shirts with this slogan will buy the goods and use them, and it will spread around the world,” Lihi Katzenelson, an Israel-based brand protection and intellectual property attorney at Arnon, Tadmor-Levy, told the Jerusalem Post, which said the two applicants are Jewish Americans.
Newsweek reached out to Katzenelson via social media on Thursday for comment.
Ackerman’s application was to patent “FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA PALESTINE WILL BE FREE” for hats and shirts. Rosenkrantz’s filing looked to trademark “From the river to the sea” for T-shirts.
Where does the phrase come from?
The full phrase “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” originated in the 1960s to encompass land between the Jordan River, on the eastern border of Israel, to the Mediterranean Sea on the west.
Critics say the phrase is antisemitic and calls for the dismantling of Israel.
‘”From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ is an antisemitic slogan commonly featured in anti-Israel campaigns and chanted at demonstrations,” the Anti-Defamation League said last month.
But some analysts say the phrase is a call for an independent Palestinian state.
“‘From the river to the sea’ is a rejoinder to the fragmentation of Palestinian land and people by Israeli occupation and discrimination,” Yousef Munayyer, a senior fellow at Arab Center Washington DC, wrote in Jewish Currents in 2021. “What Palestinians are calling for when they use the phrase in question: a state in which Palestinians can live in their homeland as free and equal citizens, neither dominated by others nor dominating them.”
From the river to the sea is an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate. My work and advocacy is always centered in justice and dignity for all people no matter faith or ethnicity.
— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) November 3, 2023
Some political figures have recently been censured by their peers in the U.S. and the U.K. for using the phrase. Representative Rashida Tlaib, who was censured in Congress this month over her comments about the war in Gaza, said the phrase is about peaceful co-existence in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
Katzenelson was worried that the patent applications could be seen negatively against the Jewish community, according The Jerusalem Post.
“Everyone is talking about this slogan,” she was quoted as saying, adding that she is concerned the decision to try to trademark it might be used against Jews.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.