Comment by pphysch
2 years ago
There's so much (intentional) confusion around basic terms in this info war.
Anti-Semitism, "antisemitism", anti-Judaism, anti-Zionism, and anti-Israel are all different concepts.
Semitic peoples include both Jews and Arabs. To erase the latter (as Zionism does) and replace them with Europeans is by definition anti-Semitic, therefore Zionism is anti-Semitic.
To address that, Zionism coined the term "antisemitism" as a synonym for "anti-Zionism".
Being pro-2-state-solution is pro-Israel (and pro-Palestine, pro-Semitic) but anti-Zionist.
Anti-Zionism is also not anti-Judaism, because there are many non-Jews that identify as Zionists, e.g. from Winston Churchill to Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
(There are also distinctions between ethnic and religious Judaism)
All this said, there are unfortunately real anti-Semitic, anti-Jew, anti-Israel individuals and groups out there that also leverage this confusion.
This does not take away from the fact that anti-Zionism is an extremely sound moral and political position, akin to anti-Nazism and other anti-totalitarianisms.
The difference between "Antisemitism" and "anti-Semitism" is merely stylistic. Both have been in use in English since 1880 when the word was borrowed from German.
It refers exclusively to hatred of Jewry not because Zionists, but because the term was was popularized in Germany in the 19th century by people who hated Jews prior to being brought into English.