Why Every Surrendered Word Makes the Next Surrender Easier

Battles are fought not only with weapons, laws, and diplomacy. They are also fought with words.

Sometimes we lose those battles before we even realize they are taking place.

Consider the vocabulary used to describe hostility toward Jews.

For centuries, one common term was Judeophobia—literally, an irrational fear or aversion toward Jews. The term had a certain power. It suggested that hostility toward Jews was not merely disagreement or criticism but a pathological social phenomenon.

As often happens in linguistic conflicts, attention gradually shifted from the phenomenon itself to the terminology used to describe it.

Over time, Judeophobes developed objections to the term.

“We do not fear Jews,” they said. “There is nothing irrational about our views.”

Whether those objections were sincere or merely rhetorical did not matter. The debate shifted from the hostility itself to the definition of the word.

Gradually, Judeophobia fell out of common usage.

The replacement was antisemitism.

For decades, it became the dominant term. Yet the pattern repeated itself.

Antisemites argued that Arabs are also Semites and therefore cannot be antisemitic. Others claimed that there is no such thing as “Semitism,” making “anti-Semitism” linguistically flawed. Some insisted that Ashkenazi Jews are not Semites at all, and therefore hostility toward them cannot be antisemitic.

Again, the debate shifted from the phenomenon to the........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)