Antisemitism is now thrown at anyone who criticizes Israel’s government. From Eric Peters at ericpetersauto.com:
“Anti-Semite” has replaced “racist” as the shut-up word du jour. But both words have lost the power they once had to shut people up by impugning their motives so as to avoid discussing their facts.
Here’s one of those – the mentioning of which is sure to bring forth calls of . . . anti-Semite!
It is that “Bibi” Netanyahu is not a Semite. He is Ben Mileikowsky. Not – as Seinfeld used to say – that there is anything wrong with that. But the point is, he’s not a Semite; i.e., a person who is Semitic. Meaning, a person of ethnically Middle Eastern/Arab origins. He is of eastern European (Polish) extraction, at least on his father’s side. Not – again – that there is anything wrong with that.
But when we hear someone call someone else an anti-Semite, the implicit implication is the accused dislikes Jews, who are commonly taken to be people of Middle Eastern/Arab origins rather than European origins. It seems strange, then, to accuse someone of being an “anti-Semite” for opposing or criticizing the policies or actions of a person who isn’t actually a Semite.
This brings up another impolitic point that is even more certain to trigger a rain of Anti-Semite! accusations. It is that there is something fishy about people who are of European origins laying claim to land in the Middle East on the basis of it being their ancestral land, promised to them by their God. More finely, that they are ordained by God to seize the land and evict those Middle Eastern people – those Semites – who have been living on that land for generations.
This is of course the fundamental tenet of what is styled “Zionism.”
A curious conflation has taken place – on several levels. To be opposed to the tenets of Zionism is to be (in the eyes of Zionists) an “anti-Semite,” which is commonly taken as a working synonym for disliking Jewish people.
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What does it matter the colour of skin, ethnic race or religion? Why has the label become more important than simple character of being?
We are all of the human race. What we do to one another is not determined by labels. It is determined by character.
“Maybe there is a beast. Maybe it’s only us.”
~ William Golding (1911-1993), “Lord of the Flies”