• disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    arrow-down
    57
    ·
    edit-2
    5 months ago

    The word you’re looking for is nationalism. It’s the same word Netanyahu should be using to defend criticism of his nation, rather than antisemitism.

    Antisemitism is a form of racism and/or religious persecution that has affected Jews around the world for over two millennia, the majority of whom are unaffiliated with the Zionist state of Israel. It would be cool if you stopped making fun of it. I’d ask Netanyahu too, but I don’t see him on Lemmy.

    • floofloof@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      47
      ·
      edit-2
      5 months ago

      Antisemitism is a form of racism and/or religious persecution that has affected Jews around the world for over two millennia, the majority of whom are unaffiliated with the Zionist state of Israel. It would be cool if you stopped making fun of it.

      I don’t think they’re making fun of antisemitism itself. People can refuse to indulge the spurious accusations of antisemitism Israel’s right-wing throws out in knee-jerk fashion every time it is criticized, and still take antisemitism seriously as a real and dangerous phenomenon with a long history. I understood the comment above yours as making fun of the former, not the latter.

      • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        29
        ·
        5 months ago

        I get it. Had Netanyahu claimed antisemitism anywhere in the article, I would’ve upvoted and laughed, but he didn’t. It seems like it’s become the go-to joke for any post about Israel now, and it has a real-world impact on the majority of Jews who have no affiliation with Israel whatsoever.

        • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          47
          ·
          5 months ago

          You’ve got it backwards. The constant conflation of antisemitism with criticism of Israel by Israel and its stooges is what’s bad for Jews. Making fun of how disingenuous they are is good for Jews who don’t want to be associated with a genocidal apartheid regime.

          • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            arrow-down
            24
            ·
            edit-2
            5 months ago

            You’re correct that Netanyahu is to blame for the initial misuse of the term, but there’s absolutely no reason to continue to dilute its meaning for fun. It’s completely fair to mock him when he uses it incorrectly. My comment was intended to be critical of mocking it without provocation, as the initial commenter had done.

            • Aceticon@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              10
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              edit-2
              5 months ago

              When both America and Israel accuse anybody demonstrating against the killing of children by the IDF as being antisemites they’re implying that killing children is a Jewish thing to do, because there is no doubt or denying that the IDF is killing children and they’re not even denying it.

              The real antisemitism is doing and supporting highly immoral deeds and then when criticised for those specific deeds claim that those criticizing it are against Jews, because that’s saying that the people doing said highly immoral deeds represent all Jews and the highly immoral deeds themselves are the product of Jewish values.

              Not even the worst antisemites since the time of the Nazis (with their “Jews eat babies” kind of propaganda) have associated mass murder of children, journalists and medical personnel with Jewishness and yet here we are with Zionists doing exactly that.

              People making fun of that strategy from the Israeli and American administrations are doing more to undo the damage done by those politicians as they shamellessly bind some of the most evil actions imaginable with Jewishness by using that accusation in an attempt to silence criticism of those action, than any amount of “but, but, but think about the Jews!” propagandists: the best thing for Jews in general is exactly that people aren’t thinking about Jews when they think about Zionists, Israel, their actions and their propaganda.

    • TheBananaKing@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      24
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      5 months ago

      That horse bolted decades ago; the term is lost.

      Just call it racism and be done. We don’t need specific terms for different demographics.

      • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        arrow-down
        12
        ·
        5 months ago

        It’s racism and/or religious persecution, hence the specific term. Not all genealogical Jews practice Judaism, and not all who practice Judaism are genealogically Jewish.

        • TheBananaKing@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          20
          arrow-down
          3
          ·
          5 months ago

          ‘Racism’ is a good enough umbrella term for ‘being shitty to people because of some demographic category’. Whether the basis is ethnic, national, religious or anything else doesn’t seem like an important distinction. Nobody considers ‘race’ to be a useful term any more, after all.

          • Tryptaminev@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            5 months ago

            I think we should use specific terms for specific things. There is differences in the origins, interests and means of different bigotries. Antisemitism is very different from Racism against Black people, which is very different from Racism against Asian people, which is different again from Racism towards Middle Easterners or general Islamophobia.

            For Jews it makes sense to distinguish Antisemitism, as it is specific in regards to the Religion+Ethnicity combination you just don’t find with Christianity or Islam. E.g. there is many Christians and Muslims of all ethnicities while most religious Jews are also ethnically Jewish.

          • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            arrow-down
            25
            ·
            edit-2
            5 months ago

            Cool. I’m glad you think so. I’ll just go ahead and inform all 16 million Jews that TheBananaKing finally made his decision.

    • peg@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      5 months ago

      Antisemitism is now a meaningless term. Good luck reclaiming it.