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Comment by slg | Hacker News Reader

>If you weren't aware, consider why.

The problem is that the lines between many of these words are confusing and often intentionally blurred by people on various sides.

While the definition of Semite includes Arabs and other people[1], anti-Semite is specifically defined as hostility towards Jews.[2]

Also not all Jews are Israelis, not all Israelis are Jews, not all Israelis or Jews are Zionists, and not all Zionists are Jews or Israelis.

It therefore is anti-Semitic when Jews are blamed for the actions of either Israelis or Zionists the same way it would be anti-Muslim to blame any random Muslim person for the actions of the Saudi government or any other specific group of Arab people.

[1] - https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Semite

[2] - https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anti-Semite

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> the lines between many of these words are confusing and often intentionally blurred by people on various sides

This simply isn't true though. The line is intentionally blurred by one side in order to suppress any valid criticism of Israel or Zionism by labelling (libelling) that critique as a criticism of Jews. There is no "various sides" to this blurring of lines.

> It therefore is anti-Semitic when Jews are blamed for the actions of either Israelis or Zionists

Hypothetically it would be but does it happen? This myth that blaming of Jews is happening broadly (not just Israel/Zionists) is exactly the misinformation that's being discussed. Your comment only perpetuates this.

Linking to dictionary definitions is a bit of a strawman; everyone knows the difference, that's not evidence that conflation is actually widespread at all. I've certainly not seen any criticism of Jews.

It's pretty awesome how we've allowed one side of an intra-Semitic conflict to co-opt Semitism so completely that being the other Semitic party to that conflict is anti-Semitic.

The term is a misnomer. You might know the history already - the context is pseudoscientific theories concerning race in German intellectual circles in the late 1800s. Rather than Judenhass (Jew-hatred), Antisemitism is a scientific-sounding word, with an air of rationality and sophistication.

Generally from the start the word meant hating Jews (not Semitic peoples as in those that speak Semitic languages - Jews specifically). If it didn't originally, it certainly came to mean that over time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism#Etymology

Maybe people that speak Semitic languages are Semitic (I don't know - feels like pseudoscience, though there could be a lot of commonality in different ways). That being said, "Antisemitism" means hating Jews. It's not a special prize or anything. More than anything, the terminology is an unhelpful distraction from the more important things around when it comes up. I wish they stuck with "Judenhass".

> More than anything, the terminology is an unhelpful distraction from the more important things around when it comes up. I wish they stuck with "Judenhass".

We can certainly agree on that point. If nothing else, it makes much clearer the implications of characterizing Israeli–Palestinian enmity as a matter of Jew-hatred: no less than the invocation of Godwin's law as a thought-terminating cliche.

> If nothing else, it makes much clearer the implications of characterizing Israeli–Palestinian enmity as a matter of Jew-hatred:

You are basically doing the exact same thing in the opposite direction.

Equating all Jews with Israel is anti-Semitic because Israel does not represent all Jews and isn't exclusively populated by Jews.

Insinuating all anti-Semitism is related to Israel is anti-Semitic because it ignores the hostility and violence that has been directed towards Jews that has nothing to do with either historic or modern politics of The Holy Land.

I am insinuating no such thing.

> Equating all Jews with Israel is anti-Semitic because Israel does not represent all Jews and isn't exclusively populated by Jews.

I think I agree with at least the letter of this claim, but I'm very puzzled at what you mean to say by it. I'm not sure whether we have a real disagreement or are talking past each other.

Throwing the word "anti-Semitism" around in the context of the politics of the Holy Land robs it of meaning. The present Israeli–Palestinian enmity has fundamentally different bases, only tenuously connected to the Western tradition culminating in "anti-Semitism". To call one by the other's name is a rhetorical trick to point at an outward similarity (hostility directed toward a majority-Jewish group) to equate Palestinian grievances with a more familiar form of Jew-hatred, to paint them as illegitimate and thereby dismiss them out of hand. And this has never been such a simple black-and-white conflict.

What's funny is that IHRA's working definition of antisemitism first lines out exactly what you've just said, that Jews != Israel, and then goes to say that criticizing Israel for its actions is antisemitic.

    - Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.

    - Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.

https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/resources/working-defin...

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