this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2025
298 points (99.3% liked)
World News
32956 readers
1255 users here now
News from around the world!
Rules:
-
Please only post links to actual news sources, no tabloid sites, etc
-
No NSFW content
-
No hate speech, bigotry, propaganda, etc
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
This is a very weird rule. Scientology originated among US Americans. Does that I can refer to prejudice against Scientologists as "anti-Americanism"? It seems to me like you believe that present-day Jews are not actually descended from the ancient Israelites, but you don't want to go so far as to say that antisemitism can't refer to hatred of Jews. So you chose a strange rule that would even count hatred of Japanese Catholics as antisemitism. If you think that Arabs are Semites and Jews aren't you, can just say that.
It's indeed not exclusive to practitioners of Judaism, as some non-practicing Jews and gentiles mistaken for Jews also experience antisemitism.
It's wrong and misleading because the term itself comes from 19th-century racial pseudoscience mixed with biblical literalism. It persists only out of its inertia as the primary term used to mean "hatred of Jews". You can argue that the term should be retired for being inaccurate, but you can't argue for it to be redefined to something else that's just as inaccurate.
This would be like if someone made up the word "anti-Herculism" to mean hatred of Greeks, thinking that Greeks were descended from Hercules. Then after 100 years of people using the term that way, someone came and said that such usage was misleading and "anti-Herculism" should also include hatred of Italians. After all, Hercules was also a figure in the mythology of ancient Italy and because Italians and Greeks share a lot of cultural and genetic traits. Those things may be true, but they're beside the point. There is no correct technical meaning of "anti-Herculism" because Hercules wasn't real.
Jewish identity itself is passed matrilinially, but specific lineages are passed patrilineally: for example, status as a kohen or Levite. If "Semite" were a category in Jewish law, then it would be passed patrilineally too.
That link has exactly zero examples of hatred of Arabs on the basis of speaking a Semitic language. There are perhaps some people who hate Arabs for reasons unrelated to race, religion, or politics – but to say that someone's prejudice is against "Semites," defined by the language family, would require that they be prejudiced against speakers of Arabic, Hebrew, and Amharic, but not against speakers of Farsi or Turkish. That is not a real thing.
Your link said "Past research found that 50 percent to 80 percent of DNA from the Ashkenazi Y chromosome, which is used to trace the male lineage, originated in the Near East." What are some other European groups that are majority-Levantine in the male line?
I did not claim that. I was responding to your statement that "European Jews can claim it [the term antisemitic] despite having no Semitic ancestry." If you believe that there is such a thing as "Semitic" ancestry, then European Jews have it, with the exception of first-generation converts.
It's true that many Jews don't practice Judaism. In my opinion, someone is a Jew if they identify as a Jew and if they either converted or have a Jewish parent. It is not just a matter of religion nor just of ancestry.
Yes, Palestinians are descended from the ancient Israelites.
There are many examples of this, but being asked not redefine a word that has always referred to hatred of Jews is not one of them.
You are just being antisemitic and I am not wasting my time with you.
you were talking to someone who sincerely believes men should be castrated because they've committed the bulk of all crimes, I'd say time could've been saved from reply number 1.
Yikes! I don’t have the habit of looking up the post history of who I am arguing with. I probably should.
Thanks for the heads up.