How Anti-Zionism Relates to Anti-Semitism

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That surprises me. I was under the impression that Orthodox Jews traditionally attend quite a few big parties, primarily wedding parties. (I remember hearing, in the early days of the COVID crisis, that the Orthodox Jewish community was especially hard hit by COVID for that reason.) So I would expect any neighborhood with lots of Orthodox Jews to have at least a few social halls that serve kosher food.


It's not surprising that people who like to harass people would be from North America. Alas, there seem to be quite a few places here in the U.S.A. where there are people who like to harass people.

Yes they do a lot of catered events. Kosher catering is a big business. I was talking about ordinary restaurants. An observant Jew won't have many options if he wants to take his wife out for a romantic candlelit dinner in most NA cities (maybe NYC is an exception) but it should be a possibility in Israel.

I don't see why people in the US would be more predisposed to harass other people in the US vs. elsewhere in the West. Those settlers are fanatics. The US does seem to be a breeding ground for fanatics.

Or maybe this is a difference between much of the West and at least some other parts of the world? (Here on WP, some people in the U.K. have complained about being harassed by strangers for no particular reason too.)

What I do know is that, as more and more immigrants have moved into my neighborhood from all over the world, and as more and more white people have moved out of the neighborhood, the kids around here have gotten much better-behaved. For example, there used to be a bunch of teenagers who hung out on a particular street corner harassing passers-by. Not anymore.

I don't know to what extent this is an actual cultural difference, vs. to what extent this is a result of immigrants feeling vulnerable and therefore feeling strong pressure to be well-behaved.


That the U.S. is, indeed.

Very interesting, and frankly a bit disturbing, at least to me. How long has this been "one of the common views among Gulf Arabs"?

It's good to see a cooling of anti-Israel fervor among Arabs, but NOT good to see them pouring contempt on Palestinians and saying that Palestinians have absolutely no case, on the grounds that Palestinians are ethnically mixed/diverse. Being of mixed/diverse ethnicity does not justify the mass eviction of Palestinians.

Last edited by Mona Pereth on 27 Oct 2023, 7:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Yeah. I dont completely follow that guys logic either. Even though ...Its nice to see a guy in traditional Arab head dress say nice things about Israel...and even call Rabin a "hero".

Since this thread's title contains the word "Anti-Semitism," I should perhaps mention my thoughts about that word.

I almost never use that term. Instead I use other terms such as "anti-Jewish bigotry," "hatred of Jews," or "Judeophobia."

Why? Because Jews aren't the only "Semites." Arabs, for example, are "Semites" too. Arabic is a Semitic language, as is Hebrew.

Therefore, the term "anti-semitism," referring specifically to bigotry against Jews only, is an implied slight to Arabs and to various other people in the Middle East and Africa.

See the Wikipedia articles on Semitic people and Semitic languages.

Speaking of clinging to lost causes

All the major Jewish organizations use the term. There are all sorts of academic studies that use the term.

On occasion I have seen it pointed out that the term is grammatically incorrect. I do not remember seeing somebody identify as a semite. I am sure you can find some examples but I have never seen it used as a synonym for prejudice against Arabs.

The Origin of the Word Antisemitism

Since this piece was published in 2015, due to its Anti-Jewish origins the use of the hyphen has been dropped and its use discouraged by such organizations as the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, Anti Defamation League, New York Times, Associated Press, and the Jewish Telegraph Agency. Don’t worry I won’t think you hate Jews because you use “Anti-Semitism”. I still spell it that way out of habit plenty of times.

Last edited by ASPartOfMe on 31 Oct 2023, 7:39 am, edited 2 times in total.

Why does "anti-semitism" refer just to prejudice against Jews? Probably because there weren't very many Arabs or other "Semites" in Europe back in the 1800's.

The term "anti-semitism," meaning prejudice only against Jews, appears to have been based on the assumption that Arabs and other "Semites" just didn't exist. Kind of like the assumption that Palestine was "a land without a people."

For that reason, yes, I've run into Arabs who take offense at it. That's why I decided, decades ago, not to use the term "anti-semitism" at all.

I won't keep harping on this issue here, I just wanted to let people know why I use the terminology I do.

Good question.

The term "anti semitism" was coined in the 19th Century by a German Gentile. It soon replaced the older term of Judenhatred (something like that) in German ...literally "jew-hatred". It soon spread to other European languages including Engish.

And in a way it was a more precise term.

The reason being ...well...there are TWO ways to hate Jews...one is by religion, and the other is by blood.

You can hate a Jew cause they just wont see the light, and accept Jesus. Or you can hate them because of their ancestry...basically racism.

In the Middle Ages hatred of Jews in Europe was about belief/religion. In the Renaissance in Spain many Jews were forced to convert but secretely kept doing Jewish rituals...so it became a matter of ancestry and blood as well. And by the 19th century all of the West world (a bad result of Darwin's theories but also to justify slavery of Africans)became obsessed with racial theories so the hatred by blood became even more widespread in the western world.

So thats why that guy invented the term...to kinda cover both kinds. And he himself was both kinds of a Jew hater.

But you're probably right. That Arab migrants were rare in western Europe in the 19th Century. So Jews were the only large group of Semites in Europe (or in the early US as well).

Today- both Muslims as a religous group, and Arabs as nationalities, have a large presence in both Europe and in North America. So logically antisemitism would be "hatred of both Jews and Arabs". And some white folks DO hate both Jews and Arabs (though they rarely have both thoughts in their heads at the same time). And the term antisemitism is still usually only used for "bigotry against Jews".

I sometimes use the term "anti-Jewish racism" to refer specifically to the race-based form of anti-Jewish bigotry.

Anyhow, to address the main point of this thread: I do feel that critics of Zionism -- especially those of us who live outside the Middle East and have the privilege of not being directly impacted by the conflict -- should also make a point of opposing anti-Jewish bigotry.

I try to do this myself. For example, here on Wrong Planet, I occasionally see people voicing what look to me like thinly-disguised Protocols-style anti-Jewish conspiracy theories. When I see such things, I usually make a point of debunking them.

I feel that this is very important, if our aim is a world where people of all religions can get along and respect each other's rights.

A major part of the problem is disagreement of what Jews are. A race, a religion, a culture, a combination of the above? Jews disagree about this, and what the predominant view is has changed over time.

The definition of antisemitism started as a subcategory of racism. For most of my life it has been colloquially defined as prejudice and hatred against Jews for whatever reason. In the last few years especially since the war started it is going back to its original meaning especially among leading Jewish organizations.

Another problem is somebody is going to take offense no matter what you say. Your meeting Arabs that have been offended and me not running into it is antidotal evidence. For starters I would have to both see evidence that leading Arab organizations are offended. They for obvious reasons seem to have other priorities at the moment. Even then I would like to see polling that shows Arabs are offended in a significant way. Recently polling showed that the population involved is not offended by “Latino” but by “Latinx” which was becoming the consensus media term and favored by a number advocacy organizations for that demographic.

For your own sake can you please stop using this phrase.

It's "anecdotal evidence".

NOT "antidotal".

An "antidote" is medicine you take for a poisonous snake bite.

An "anecdote" is a one-off story.

"Anecdotal evidence" is evidence based upon one-off eyewitness accounts (like most evidence for ghosts) as opposed to evidence that is based upon systematically collected empirical data.

"Antidotal evidence" is not even a "thing" unless you're trying to be clever and do deliberate wordplay. Which you're not here.

From most of what I have seen online and in interviews 'anti-zionism' is generally just a cover or justification to be anti-sematic, let the person speak long enough and they are soon bashing out anti-Jewish tropes. So I personally see them as largely one and the same, and from listening to some Jewish people they largely seem to hold the same view, and I am quite comfortable allowing the targets of the hate to have the voice that defines what that hate is.

^ Unfortunately it goes both ways, bigots engage in dehumanizing tropes whether that be Antisemitic, Islamophobic, anti-Israeli or anti-Palestinian. Bigots will generally try to hide their bigotry with some sort of disinformation / propaganda they've read on Facebook