It seems to me anyone of Palestinian background might be forgiven for considering Jew to be a pejorative term. You are right that the Zionists claim to speak for all Jews, and Israel claims to be our homeland. Whatever distinction there may be between Jewish and Israeli is deliberately blurred and the defenders of Zionism are the first to equate criticism of Israel with “anti-Semitism”.

Zionism actually began as a rejection of nineteenth century Jewish values and culture, i.e. the Zionists said to the Jewish community “stop praying for God to deliver you from the ghetto, and do something for yourselves.”

Great, and so what did they do? They went and took someone else’s land. This is really not in keeping at all with Jewish values.

It took a long while for religious Jews to embrace Zionism. The Messiah was supposed to lead us back to Zion, not ben Gurion and a bunch of atheists. In my opinion, we were wrong to embrace it, for all the damage it’s done.

It impresses me that you are making the distinction. There’s a notion here in the U.S. that anti-Jewish sentiment (you are right, anti-Semitism is an incorrect term) is very widespread in the Arab world. Sad to say, many American Jews would be surprised to find a discussion on an Arab website about how to criticize Zionism without insulting the Jewish people per se.

FYI you are as semitic as they are so how could you be anti-semitic?
Arabs, Aramaeans, Assyrians, Babylonians, Chaldeans, Sabaeans, and Hebrews are all semitic decendents of Shem.

Zionists hijacked the word in the 19th century. Only Mizrahi Jews are semites

The commonality is the guilt that the public at large has been forced to incur over the opression of other groups. In america in relation to blacks its referred to as “White Guilt”, a general guilt imposed on white americans regardless of their ancestery. Forcing whites to be apologetic and fearful of being labled a racist.

I believe the “J” word in the middle east is a similar phenomenon. A guilt by the educated classes for being Arab and for being associated with the opression of jews. Regardless if individual Arabs are guilty of it or not, its a blanket stereotype imposed on arabs, that we hate jews etc. This perception makes people excessively apologetic out of fear and that fear is generally the fear of the court of public opinion. Who wants to be labled anti-semitic in a liberal society, you would be better off with the plague! Thats how the word Jew can be used as a slur, out of fear of peoples percieved image of you. A Jew saying jew is neutral because how could they be racist against themselves but the farther you stray from that group the more racist the word becomes, until you hit the polar opposite, Arabs (who arent really that opposite) an Arab using the word JEW is percieved as edgy or even racist because of the stereotype of “the arab who hates jews”. All i can say is God free me from these social shackles!

G: There are people in this world who are very ill educated, who are stuck in that mob mentality. but moreover, again, the word “yahood” (jew) and the word “sahyooni” (zionist) have come to mean the exact same thing. the impression imparted on the arab world is that there is no difference. people say the word “jew” out of habit now. it makes it harder to separate them when there are so many elements, including Israel itself, that seem to want them meaning the same thing.

D.B. Shobrawy: nice to see you on my blog. i agree with the level of political correctness and the hyper sensitivity you’re talking about but i’m hoping we can get to a place where states of mind are shifted. and while the political correctness of “blacks” is a good example of social tendencies, theirs is a struggle that is very different than that of the political structure of israel and zionism with relations to jews

JOSEPH WAHED,who grew up in Egypt,remembers this: distressing for me since it conjured up terrible memories of when I was a young boy growing up in Egypt. These memories included Egyptian mobs descending upon the Jewish quarter of Cairo chanting ” Al Yahud Kelabna,” followed by violence that left some Jews dead and injured and the community dazed.Egyptian Muslim mobs no longer do this, but only because there is no longer an Egyptian Jewish community to speak of. We once were over 80,000. Today there are fewer than 50 Jews remaining in Egypt, according to one official tally.Being Jewish was criminalized in Egypt in the late 1940s. Other Arab states such as Iraq, Libya, and Syria, passed similar laws. Jews began facing iron walls of discrimination and harassment by the authorities. Most of us were dispossessed. Our schools, homes, synagogues, businesses, farms, and hospitals, were all confiscated by Arab governments. Our rich, 3,000-year-old culture and heritage was decimated. No trial, no jury, no justice.

http://www.nysun.com/article/38350?access=839775

Furthermore, let’s all grow thicker skin as it is more akin to getting somewhere in converse.

Love always
J

Social conditioning and hyper sensitivity has caused the words that have been acceptably used to describe a group to be hurtful. Thats why Black and Jew have become slurs. First black people were called colored, then negro, then Black and now African American. African American is the only acceptable term left, i cant wait till that goes out of style. However i think the term is too convoluted with nonsense for anyone to discern a negative meaning.

Anyway, It’s funny because I feel the same way, it’s like you want to whisper it instead of saying it out loud.

I never had this problem in Amman, when we said “Yahoody” we only meant the religion but here in Canada I developed this thing where I am afraid to say it when referring to someone. But I think I know why; A lot of people in Canada hate Jews and they refer to them as being cheap among other things (which I do not agree with at all and I hate it when somebody does that) so they refer to a person by saying “ oh he is such a Jew” so it became kind of an insult in a way, like for example the word Arab means terrorist nowadays and I bet you anybody hears it thinks 9/11 right away.

It boggles my mind that in North America I found so much hate for Jews from white and European people in particular. I heard so many racist things here in Canada that I never knew existed back in Amman.

They hate Jews because of the religion and traditions where we hate the state of Israel because of the Palestinian peoples suffering and their policy.

So did that affect you Nas? When you stayed in Canada and made you feel that this word is bad?

In much the same way now do people spit the word “Muslim”, or “Palestinian”. The clash of cultures, and the co-opting of Islam by the fanatic and violent has turned the name of a religion into a curse in much of the west.

It is my opinion that any Theocracy is a mistake, whether it be the theocracy in Israel, the theocracy in Iran, the theocratic monarchy in Saudi Arabia, or the attempt at a theocracy being perpetrated by the Bush administration in the United States.

It seems upon review that most of the religions agree on basic moral principals. Do not steal. Do not lie. Do not commit adultery. Do not kill. Do not hurt others. Since that is fairly common to all, why does religion want to be the basis of secular government?

The prophet Jesus (PBUH)said “Render unto Ceasar that which is Ceasar’s. Render unto God, that which is God’s.” It seems even He supported the concept of separation of church and state.

Once religion gets a foot in the door of the political arena, it seems that both politics and religion start down a slippery slope to perdition.

How can any Israeli point a finger on anyone critisizing Israel’s policy to be anti-semitic while what they do mostly is opressing semitic nation?

Maybe because of the strength of this term, we should use it to our benefit. Whenever it comes up, we should point out that we are semitic as well. Arabs are semitic. Stop the anti-semitic against us.