Re: Unfair to Jews, but don't get bent out of shape about it (#31845)
by Marc "Adam Moshe" Bacharach on March 13, 2004 at 3:20 PM

Wilhelm Marr is credited with coining the German word "Antisemitismus" in 1873, at a time when racial science was fashionable in Germany. So far as can be ascertained, the word was first printed in 1880. In that year Marr published "Zwanglose Antisemitische Hefte," and Wilhelm Scherer used the term "Antisemiten" in the "Neue Freie Presse" of January. The word was coined to give a more scientific term to mean the dislike of Jews.

I don't know what dictionary you use, but mine defines anti-Semitism as the following:
"Hostility toward or prejudice against Jews or Judaism;
Discrimination against Jews."

Furthermore, the consensus, as illustrated through polling language, world leaders, and lay-people alike, say that the term means anti-Jewish. Have you honestly ever heard it used in any other way to mean any other thing?

the term anti-semitism is meaningful (#31860)
by David C Battle on March 14, 2004 at 12:12 PM

Because of it's history, the term "anti-semitism" has power. That's why Arabs will play their little semantic word games and deny that they are anti-semites.

The term anti-semitism is meaningful and should not be casually dismissed because of semantic word games the "semites" engage in when rightfully accused of it. When you change words, meaning is lost. Arabs and other jew-haters know this, and thus their desire not to be called anti-semites.

The term anti-semitism has a history and connotation that merely saying "anti-Jew" does not. The Holocaust was not the result of people being anti-jewish; it was because of Anti-Semitism. The long history of jewish oppression was not the result of anti-jewishness--it was Anti-Semitism.

I, for one, will never stop using the word when it's appropriate, word games notwithstanding.