• flying_sheep@lemmy.ml
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    19 hours ago

    Conflating Israel and Jews is called antisemitism. If someone is just anti-Israel, they don’t become antisemitic from that (but it sure invites a lot of antisemites who smell a possible convert)

    • Fortunafors@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      Not quite, cause semites also includes Muslim Arabs, also most Anti-israel people are just anti-zionism, The thing is most people that are anti-israel are just anti-jews because they know nothing they talk about.

      • flying_sheep@lemmy.ml
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        6 hours ago

        When I was 14, I also wisecracked that, but then

        1. I learned that linguistics is a descriptive discipline, not a prescriptive one: meaning correspond to usage, not what a word is “supposed” to mean
        2. I realized that words often have meanings that don’t correspond to their literal translation

        So no, antisemitism doesn’t refer to any semitic tribes that aren’t Jewish.

        • Fortunafors@lemmy.world
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          3 minutes ago

          I agree with you that words meaning is a thing of context, and what matters the most is what people imply when they use it, generalization usually takes a person to the wrong path; the only real guide for almost everything is the context.

          IMO, anti-Semitism is more used to refer to anti-muslim sentiment than anti-jew sentiment, but I guess the location on earth that I walk matters a lot.