Observation regarding Israel

[bigmacbear]

Partly because I don't wish to be seen as pontificating about things I know not of, and partly because I don't have time, I'll just observe:

This morning I had my alarm clock set to Air America Radio, the Stephanie Miller show, and somebody got on and started lambasting her for (in his view) equating the two sides in the recent dust-up in Israel and southern Lebanon, calling her "anti-Semitic" among other things. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't both Jews and Arabs considered "Semitic"?

The only other observation I can make is clearly this is a conflict where no one involved is necessarily rational, and under those circumstances diplomacy is unlikely to ever be effective.

Comments

[rfmcdpei.livejournal.com]

Anti-Semitism is a word that has a long history of being directly associated with anti-Jewish sentiment, dating back to the late 19th century when the Jews stood out as the only people of Semitic descent in Europe. Trying to redefine "anti-Semitism" to include other peoples of nominally Semitic descent strikes me as an unnatural appropriation of the word, especially given the ways in which some people misuse this altered term.