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Comment by pagade | Hacker News Reader

Antisemitic. Every time I hear this word, I can’t help but think of its irony—a term used exclusively for describing discrimination against one community, as if prejudice against them carries more weight than against any other. Perhaps, though, it serves as the best reflection of our hypocrisy.

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It's incredible that a term was coined in the 19th Century to describe demonstrable hatred toward Jews, that the term was happily adopted and popularized by people who hated Jews, and now over 150 years later the term itself is pointed to as "proof" of Jewish privilege or conspiracy, perpetuating the cycle of ignorance and hatred under a new guise.

Not to mention there are more semitic people than Jews. And Holocaust targeted more people, too. And there were pogroms against other poeple, too.

The Romani people for example (derogatorily called "gypsies". The term "gyp"—to scam—derives from stereotypes of Romani people) faced some of the most gruesome programs in history before facing the Romani Genocide in WW2. Yet we rarely talk about antiziganism the way we talk about antisemitism and people still casually throw around terms like "gyp"

The word has never, in its history, been used for anything other than racism against Jews. There are Semitic languages, not people.

> Due to the root word Semite, the term is prone to being invoked as a misnomer by those who incorrectly assert (in an etymological fallacy) that it refers to racist hatred directed at "Semitic people" in spite of the fact that this grouping is an obsolete historical race concept. Likewise, such usage is erroneous; the compound word antisemitismus was first used in print in Germany in 1879 as a "scientific-sounding term" for Judenhass (lit. 'Jew-hatred'), and it has since been used to refer to anti-Jewish sentiment alone

> Not to mention there are more semitic people than Jews.

Accurate, but irrelevant. The meaning of anti-semitic has always specifically been hatred of Jews.

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Does Israels actions over the years have any impact on how Jews are treated elsewhere?

Why would it matter? I don't think we should ever justify Islamophobia based on the actions of Islamic states or other Islamic groups; by the same token we should never justify antisemitic hate crimes regardless of our views on Israel.

It does as its also a goal of Zionists. They want more Jews to move there and if they don't feel safe elsewhere they are more likely to do so.

Especially when you consider "semites" are a member of an ancient or modern people from southwestern Asia, such as the Akkadians, Phoenicians, Hebrews, or Arabs. It can also refer to a descendant of these peoples.

So, many Palestinians are Semites as well. And one may conclude when Ovadia Yosef, a former Chief Rabbi of Israel, says:

“It is forbidden to be merciful to them. You must send missiles to them and annihilate them. They are evil and damnable. The Lord shall return the Arab’s deeds on their own heads, waste their seed and exterminate them, devastate them and vanish them from this world.”*

That this is "Anti-Semitic" speech as well.

It's amazing how buying off 98% of US Representatives can change a cultural and media narrative.

*https://adc.org/racist-incitement-by-israeli-leaders-must-en...

Antisemitism specifically refers to hatred of Jews. It doesn't matter whether it's the most accurate term given that it's anti-semitism; that's still what the term means.

The thing is, the term "Semite" is (except in very archaic contexts) pretty much dictionary-only.

It exists, and has semantic validity. But it does not in any way describe a group that has ever had any kind of common identity. Or as Wikipedia (itself a kind of a dictionary) puts it:

    The terminology is now largely unused outside the grouping "Semitic languages" in linguistics.

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