Is the cry "Anti-semetic" overused?

[Tao_Equus]

The Nazi death camps of the holocaust are now over 60 years behind us. Nobody with any humanity can deny that they were an appalling effort of genocide and an act against humanity. No westerner, except maybe a bunch of extreme right wing nutcases, can deny that this was the single most terrible event of the 20th century. Most westerners have a relative that fought and possibly died to bring such evil to an end. I know I have several.

The seizure of Palestine to make the new state of Israel, a state that had never previously existed, has given the Jewish people a homeland. But the nature of that seizure has led to animosity and conflict across the middle east. The peoples of Palestine have been annexed into the poorest, most infertile peices of land. Subjected to constant Israeli humiliations at every turn the Palestinians have sought to turn their basic weaponry to fight for their own survival. Israel answers back with tanks and sophisticated American supplied appache helicopter gunships. Or fires indescriminate salvos of artillary from offshore warships into Palestinian districts. The death toll at present I believe to be about 28 Palestinians for every Israeli.

Yet to criticise the policy of Israel, or to link any Jew to any wrong doing seems to pull down the accusation of anti-semetism or of having an extreme right wing agenda. There are many humanitarian individuals that have no anti-jewish opinions at all, but are simply anti Israeli policy, that end up under fire with the label anti-semite. This is wrong. Jews are not a perfect people they are a people like any other. Their leaders make mistakes and should be criticized when they do without fear of this wolf cry of anti-semite.

Israel funds organisations across the world that searches high and low for any criticism of its policy. In America such organisations have been convicted in court of infiltrating and stealing FBI files, wire tapping, and breaking and entering. They are absolutely prepared to go to any lengths regardless of any laws to compile dossiers on anyone who dares say a Jew does something bad. This overt sensitivity may be born of great injury done to the Jewish people but governments should be able to realise that a criticism of its policy does not infer that individual is anti-semetic.

To sum up:
My contention is that Israel and Jewish organisations and individuals cry anti-semite or fascist too often and without fair cause. And that they do this to deflect criticism rather than because they think it true.


Any opinions?

TE

[cyberpi]

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

Any opinions?

Yes... Europeans might do well to broaden their understanding of what an anti-semetic is:

Semitic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Giving it to the racial Jew line seems to be par for the course. The overwhelming majority of people who died in WWII were not Jew. Most were Christian and/or European... the Russians took a huge hit. I'm told the UK did too... were those London bridges falling down, or Jewish bridges?

[Tao_Equus]

Originally Posted by cyberpi

Yes... Europeans might do well to broaden their understanding of what an anti-semetic is:

Semitic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Giving it to the racial Jew line seems to be par for the course. The overwhelming majority of people who died in WWII were not Jew. Most were Christian and/or European... the Russians took a huge hit. I'm told the UK did too... were those London bridges falling down, or Jewish bridges?

Well as you point out i poorly understood the origins of the word, and failed to spell it correctly too!! Think death toll for WW2 was 13m? Almost half were Jewish...maybe not all but a significant enough percentage for them to feel like they were the target.

TE

[flowperson]

Yeah...the "semitic" label has been misused for so many years now that it has become a brand name like "kleenex" or "xerox". In the ways that it is used it, IMHO, automatically causes conflict within the societies of the East. Jews bad mouthing Arabs and Arabs bad mouthing Jews are both technically being "anti-semitic".

Putting the beautiful diversity of the human family inside of an ideological box and then branding and sloganeering it to death is one of the many and great societal plagues brought upon us all and invented in the twentieth century by advertising and public relations "experts". Joseph Goebbels comes to mind. It's all so evident and obvious at election times and in times of conflict, because it stirs emotions.

Today we might think of it as "corporate speak" wherein impersonal entities rename something and then sell its use for nefarious purposes. Very toxic stuff.

flow....

[Tao_Equus]

Originally Posted by flowperson

Yeah...the "semitic" label has been misused for so many years now that it has become a brand name like "kleenex" or "xerox". In the ways that it is used it, IMHO, automatically causes conflict within the societies of the East. Jews bad mouthing Arabs and Arabs bad mouthing Jews are both technically being "anti-semitic".

Putting the beautiful diversity of the human family inside of an ideological box and then branding and sloganeering it to death is one of the many and great societal plagues brought upon us all and invented in the twentieth century by advertising and public relations "experts". Joseph Goebbels comes to mind. It's all so evident and obvious at election times and in times of conflict, because it stirs emotions.

Today we might think of it as "corporate speak" wherein impersonal entities rename something and then sell its use for nefarious purposes. Very toxic stuff.

flow....

Toxic is a good word for it.

[dauer]

Absolutely it is used too much. Jews have been called antisemitic by other Jews simply for being against certain Israeli policies or for supporting the Palestinians. I've been accused of suggesting someone was antisemitic before when I did no such thing, simply because it's become such a Jewish stereotype. It's ridiculous.

However, despite its etymological roots, antisemite has come to mean anti-Jew and not anti-semite. It might be linguistically faulty, but that is the meaning it has acquired. The folks most behind the push to spread the idea that antisemite really refers to any semite are often those Arab groups who have a specific beef with the Jewish people as a means to distract and confuse terms. That is to say they can then go ahead and state, "Oh, we're not antisemitic. We are semitic."

Sometimes a distinction is, however, made between antisemite and anti-semite, where without a hypen it refers specifically to Jews.

Dauer

[cyberpi]

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

Well as you point out i poorly understood the origins of the word, and failed to spell it correctly too!! Think death toll for WW2 was 13m? Almost half were Jewish...maybe not all but a significant enough percentage for them to feel like they were the target.

TE

13m? Where does the number 13 million come from? Is that the total number of deaths of only the Allied Powers of World War ONE? Is that the Military deaths only, of the Allied powers only, of WW2... without counting China? Is that the civilian deaths only of WW2, minus the military deaths, minus several million... without counting the Jews who died in concentration camps? Is that the total number of people who died in ghettos and concentration camps?

Do Europeans today still think that it is civilized practice to ban someone from their presence whom they think is uncivil?

Originally Posted by flowperson

Jews bad mouthing Arabs and Arabs bad mouthing Jews are both technically being "anti-semitic".

So if a European bad mouths a European does that make him/her an 'anti-European'? If an American bad mouths Europeans does that make him/her an 'anti-European'? Or, as you suggest, if a Frenchmen bad mouths Germans does that make him/her technically 'anti-European'?

[flowperson]

So if a European bad mouths a European does that make him/her an 'anti-European'? If an American bad mouths Europeans does that make him/her an 'anti-European'? Or, as you suggest, if a Frenchmen bad mouths Germans does that make him/her technically 'anti-European'?[/quote]

Hi Cyberpi:
I figure that my rant was really about the deterioration of precise language usage over the decades. The media has had a big hand in all this. After all they are always selling time, space, and adverts as their prime objective at the insistence of investment bankers and share holders. So branded labeling strategies are used to imprint an image upon the public psyche through just the use of a word or two.

In the case of your three observations:
1. Yes, self-criticism works in the long run and has the attribute of sometimes bringing about large scale governmental changes. That's why obejective media sources are so badly needeed these days. Yes if Europeans bad mouth Europeans then massive systems of self-reflection are activated and you see new things such as the European Union come about over thirty years.

2. Yes, to an extent. Americans sometimes have distorted views of Europeans depending what they are used to seeing through the media. I've only had one trip to Europe in the past to France on business and pleasure. I'm sure my vision of Europeaness is distorted since my personal-live experiences are twenty five years old and that that affects my ability to know as much as possible.

Hell...there were Gendarmes walking around on the streets of Paris with machine guns back then, but am I anti-European ?...no I don't believe that I am. I am a regular listener to the BBC and Radio Netherlands, so I'm getting as much objective news as I can these days.

But I'm sure there are anti-American Europeans these days, especially when we keep doing things like rejecting Germany's and England's suggestions to talk about workable long-term carbon emissions reduction proposals. People to people I believe that Americans and Europeans like each other quite a bit...but when Government and political strategies gets in the way....

3. This is a case of anti-French Europeans and anti-German Europeans not liking each other sometimes. Don't you love adjectives ?

flow....

[cyberpi]

Originally Posted by dauer

Absolutely it is used too much. Jews have been called antisemitic by other Jews simply for being against certain Israeli policies or for supporting the Palestinians. I've been accused of suggesting someone was antisemitic before when I did no such thing, simply because it's become such a Jewish stereotype. It's ridiculous.

However, despite its etymological roots, antisemite has come to mean anti-Jew and not anti-semite. It might be linguistically faulty, but that is the meaning it has acquired. The folks most behind the push to spread the idea that antisemite really refers to any semite are often those Arab groups who have a specific beef with the Jewish people as a means to distract and confuse terms. That is to say they can then go ahead and state, "Oh, we're not antisemitic. We are semitic."

Sometimes a distinction is, however, made between antisemite and anti-semite, where without a hypen it refers specifically to Jews.

Dauer

From my perspective, an anti-semite is a European... and an antisemite is a German. No sense accusing the Mexicans. For example, Heinrich von Treitschke, Wilhelm Marr, or Wilhelm Scherer were antisemitic. Did they not coin the word? They were German, and they were European. Am I wrong? They were NOT Arab. I am fairly certain the English word 'antisemitism' did not come from an Arabic word, so I question why 'Arab' groups are the accused for disobeying the German linguistic coinage. I disobey it, and I am neither Arab, nor semitic, nor antisemitic. I am a Gentile.

[Sunny C.]

We need a word specifically for race motivated hatred for Jews. Antisemite is a lousy word, but that's the word we use. Cyberpi makes an interesting point about antisemitism being a white man's game. Nowadays I think we should try to be more specific. If it's anti-Israeli, for example, it would be good to call it that.

[cyberpi]

...

[dauer]

From my perspective, an anti-semite is a European... and an antisemite is a German. No sense accusing the Mexicans. For example, Heinrich von Treitschke, Wilhelm Marr, or Wilhelm Scherer were antisemitic. Did they not coin the word? They were German, and they were European. Am I wrong? They were NOT Arab

No, but there are arab antisemites too, like Hassan Nasrallah who has said, among other things, " "If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable, weak and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew. Notice, I do not say the Israeli."

It's not about the origin of the word, it's about the way it's used today.

I am fairly certain the English word 'antisemitism' did not come from an Arabic word, so I question why 'Arab' groups are the accused for disobeying the German linguistic coinage.

You're right, the word antisemitism didn't come from arabic, but if they're going to use English then absolutely they should be following the standard usage of the word. If they wanted to use an arabic word and say, "This arabic word we are using is for persecution of both Jewish and Muslims" then that would be different, but they're not. They're choosing to use another language's terms for anti-Jew, regardless where it came from, that's what it's come to mean.

I disobey it, and I am neither Arab, nor semitic, nor antisemitic. I am a Gentile

Never said only arabs do it. I said that's the primary fodder for this case of linguistic acrobatics that serve no purpose but to confuse the matter of responsibility and ownership.

Dauer

[Tao_Equus]

Dauer: It's not about the origin of the word, it's about the way it's used today.

Indeed, that is all that it is important. We have anti-Zionist, of course, for the state of Israel as apposed to Jews as a whole, but this tends to be used by non-Jews and anti-semite tends to be an accusation levelled at non-Jews by Jews. Anyhow no point getting lost in semantics, we all know what we mean.

TE

[juantoo3]

Kindest Regards, dauer!

Originally Posted by dauer

...linguistic acrobatics that serve no purpose but to confuse the matter of responsibility and ownership.

Very astute! I see this all too often.

As our esteemed Buddhist friends remind us; the word is not the thing, the menu is not the food.

Origins of words is important to linguistic anthropology, and perhaps related applications to such as interpretation of various religious scriptures.

Apart from this, I fail to see the connection to current applied usage.

At the risk of opening myself for unmerited criticism, allow me to use the example of the word "fag." It can mean a variety of things, depending on context and implication. In a derogatory sense, it can mean a homosexual. Or in a slang sense it can be a cigarette. Without looking up the etymology, I do know that in times past a fag was a piece of wood headed for a / the fire.

The linguistic acrobatics I am observing here (by no means for the first time on this site or in the world at large) is conflating various associated meanings of the term anti-semite / antisemite. Sometimes it may be intentional, for purposes I can only guess. Most times I suspect it is because a person may not be fully paying attention, and as was alluded to earlier by another, falls victim to the "corporate speak" brainwashing that echoes in one's mind.

I believe someone here once referred to this as "cognitive dissonance." In this context, I agree.

[dauer]

Tao

but this tends to be used by non-Jews and anti-semite tends to be an accusation levelled at non-Jews by Jews

No, that's an oversimplification. It's used by some of the zionists on the right against anyone who doesn't support their agenda, which includes Jews like myself. And it's not only used by Jews on the right. I've seen fundamentalist Christians refer to Jews as antisemitic and self-hating becuause they don't support the actions of the Israeli gov't, which is by no means a requirement of our religion anyway. Calling it an issue of the way Jews use the word about gentiles instead of an issue of the way a specific group of Jews use it against everything else including fellow Jews is just a generalization and the continuing of a false stereotype that Jews are by definition rabid zionists who salivate at the chance to call their detractors antisemites. I do consider myself a zionist, and in that I support the people, not the government. For that matter I also support the Palestinian people, but not the government. War stinks. It's a lose-lose situation and both sides are at fault.

However, you are absolutely correct to say that the term anti-zionist would be more appropriate at those times.

Dauer