With whom, other than among idiots and pedants? It always has and still does refer solely to people who don’t like Jews. And we already have a way to magically create a word to describe somebody who doesn’t like whatever: you tack “anti-” on the front of it. English is a very utilitarian language.
Tony must really want the OP’s topic not to be discussed.
Actually, the only time I have ever encountered a pundit or speaker claiming that antisemitism meant anything other than anti-Jewish, that pundit or speaker was acting as an antisemite and trying to play semantic games.
I do not accuse you of being a member of that group, but there really is no confusion regarding the word except when an antisemite has deliberately used it to include other people speaking Semitic languages. The word has a clear meaning that is used in well over 99% of its applications. There is no need to find synonyms.
Well, to be fair Tony has said that no, he doesn’t think or at least “isn’t sure” whether it’s bigoted to claim that “French Jews are more loyal to Israel than to France.”
It would be interesting to hear his answer to the question whether it was racist or not to think that Japanese-Americans were more loyal to the Japanese Empire than to the US.
Tip: To any question that begins that way the answer is probably “yes.” Even if the question concludes with “. . . circumcise their sons?”
Let’s not speculate on the reasons behind other posters’ comments.
[ /Moderating ]
It causes confusion for me. If I’m reading an old book, I can confidently assume that anti-Semitism refers to racism against Jews. But if I’m reading a current message board, and I see a headline that X has accused Y of anti-Semitism, I don’t know whether X means that Y made a racist statement/action against Jews in general, or that Y criticized a statement by Netanyahu.
I don’t see why that’s automatically bad. I think it’s good if people think that there is only one race, the human race. And I don’t know of anyone who has considered “Jew” a nationality since ancient times, and it wasn’t technically correct even then.
Well, from previous experience with you, I don’t expect that you find anything you disagree with compelling, but in my first post here, I made a good faith effort to clarify that in order to answer your OP, I needed to distinguish between the ethnic and religious aspects of “Jew,” and that “anti-Semitic” was inadequate to do so. The fact that you have derailed your own thread by pouncing on that, rather than on what I considered the substance of my answer to your question, IMO proves my point that the term causes more trouble than it’s worth.
No, it is for the reasons I have already given – failure to distinguish between the ethnic and religious aspects of Jewishness, and because in recent years it has been so often used in regard to criticism of Israeli policies that it is in danger of becoming a caricature of itself — I consider people who talk about anti-Semitism in connection with Israeli politics on a par with those who worry about the US adopting Sharia law.
So, I politely answered your question, but you didn’t answer mine: should we have a unique term for racism against each ethnic group? Should black people get angry when I talk about “racism against blacks,” rather than anti-Africanism or whatever?
No, that means that you’re not sure if the term has been misused or not because no reasonable person has ever defined an anti-Semite as anyone who criticized Netanyahu.
In fact, were we to take your statement at face value we’d have to think that you honestly believe that Netanyahu’s first two wives are believed by many to be an anti-Semite because both have rather obviously criticized him in extremely strong terms.
No, I actually shredded your argument by pointing to history. You’ll notice that every other person on this thread has said your argument about “anti-Semite” is silly.
Anyway, since you’ve said you’re not sure whether or not it’s anti-Semitic to say that French Jews are more loyal to Israel than France, let me ask you an obvious question.
Do you think it is anti-Semitic to think that American Jews are more loyal to Israel than to the United States.
I didn’t say it was reasonable; I said it occurs frequently.
And to take your argument at face value, we’d have to think that you honestly believe that it’s quite rare to find unreasonable people on message boards. I have certainly seen people called anti-Semitic for saying exactly the same thing that Israeli politicians who disagree with Bibi have said.
Yeah, it’s kind of sad, because they all seem to be focusing on the Jew-vs-Assyrian aspect of it. You would think that they would realize that something I surrounded with disclaimers like “strictly,” “can be construed,” and “an extreme example” is not a position I am advocating. Every statement I’ve made about the actual IMO misuse of “anti-Semitic” was with regard to equating it to criticism of Israel.
Oh that’s right — your response to my first post in this thread gave no indication that you had read past the first couple paragraphs, where I explained why I didn’t like the term “anti-Semitism,” and you evidently saw red and lept to the keyboard to derail your thread.
However, if you can get past the short explanation about my dislike of the term “anti-Semitic,”, you will see that I gave IMO a thoughtful answer to the question you just asked, as my answer did not specify the host country, and works as well for the US as for France.
Bullshit. Name a single person who has accused either of Netanyahu’s first two wives of being anti-Semites.
Your answer was lots of things but wasn’t thoughtful.
That said, thanks for making it clear that you think there’s nothing anti-Semitic in claiming that American Jews are more loyal to Israel than the US.
Let’s try another.
Do you think it’s anti-Semitic to claim that Jews control Hollywood or that Jews control the media?
I await your thoughtful response.
Thanks in advance.
The Jews have too much power statement is anti-Semitic in my opinion.
The first statement “French Jews are more loyal to Israel than to France” is another issue. The framing of the statement is in poor taste and borders on jingoistic. Is loyalty to France or any other nation desirable? Is putting your ancestors homeland before your current residence a negative attribute? The fact that they asked the question says more about the questioner than the respondent. An affirmative response would require further elaboration before I labeled it anti-Semitic.
Netanyahu?
I said almost exactly the same thing about half an hour before you posted. I shouldn’t have allowed Ibn to bait me with his implication that you’d have to be an idiot to not have heard of Wilhelm Marr, but yes, yes, I concede that it was a mistake to even mention that Arabs are Semites, heavily disclaimered though it was.
I strongly disagree with your 99% figure. Obviously neither of us has read every post on every board about Israel’s political policies, and perhaps you’ve had better luck than I have, but I repeat my claim that it has become common to find people characterizing criticism of Israel’s policies wrt the settlements, or their actions against Palestinians, or their preemptive strikes against other countries, etc., as anti-Semitism.
. . . interesting.
Yes, it shows that the questioner had an adequate understanding of the history of anti-Semitism while people who insist that saying “yes” to the question isn’t anti-Semitic display extreme ignorance of the history of anti-Semitism.
What if the respondent was a friend of French Jews who happened to explicitly express their loyalty to Israel over France and this friend respected their position? That wouldn’t meet the criteria of anti-semitism.
While I’m sure that those astonishing misinterpretations of what I wrote are inadvertent, I don’t think there’s any point in continuing when we are clearly not communicating.
Nor do I understand why you feel entitled to keep asking me questions, while refusing to answer mine. Have a nice evening.
To the contrary, it is extremely specific. There was always a tradition in Christian Europe of hating Jews for religious reasons – the German word for it was Judenhass (“Jew-hate”) – which, at least in theory, a Jew could always escape by converting to Christianity, and reviling Jews as those who crucified Our Lord. But, in 19th-Century Europe, there emerged the very different idea of antisemitism – the idea that Jews are evil, exploitive, non-creative parasites, by their nature, as a matter of genetic heredity which no conversion can correct.
Bullshit. I said no such thing nor did I bait you. I said you made a “common misconception” and then ripped your argument to shreds as did several others.
Please don’t make personal attacks on me just because I ripped your arguments to shreds.
Since you continued on for several posts despite several people ridiculing your argument it is impossible to take this statement seriously.
BTW, since you stupidly implied earlier that a common understanding of “anti-Semitism” is “anyone who criticizes Netanyahu” please, once again, produce a single person who has ever accused either of Netanyahu’s first two wives of being anti-Semite.
If you were being genuine about your claim that a common understanding of the definition of anti-Semitism is criticism of Netanyahu then producing such evidence should be easy.
Otherwise reasonable people would have to believe you made a statement that you can’t back up.
Bullshit.
Show me where I misinterpreted you.
You stated, or at least strongly implied that many people claim anyone who criticizes Netanyahu is an anti-Semite.
Are you going to deny you said that.
Your questions were already answered. Pretending otherwise doesn’t help your case. I’ll take your fleeing as a concession that your argument is weak.