Namelessness and antisemitism

I was reading this article via a link on bluesky and to my shame almost immediately replied to the effect of 'its not Jewishness that's the problem, its Zionism' but then it hit me how wrong I was, I put a mollifying statement afterwards to try to correct my error but its time to open the can of worms that was intentionally or not opened by this article:

Israel

By definition one might assume that the correct term for a resident of Israel is Israeli, which a layman might assume is a valid. I'm not sure of the legality of the term but the reality of the term is that simply isn't true. So what can we say about the national demonym of Israel (dem meaning people, and nym meaning name) and what does it infer?

Israel was the name given to Jacob, the biblical ancestor of the Jewish race. How can a Palestinian, or anyone else of the gentile races call them selves Israeli? One might become a Jew and through adoptionism be considered Israeli but even through Christian adoptionism it seems either incredibly bold or foolish to call oneself Israeli.

If a Palestinian, or anyone else can't call themselves by the demonym Israeli, they are at best a second class citizen or even a strange kind of non-citizen.

Jews

So if this principal means we can't establish who is a scion of Jacob-Israel does that mean all who are Israeli are Jews?

Erm... That's a real mess...

The term Jew comes from the name Judah, one founder and name of the twelve tribes of the Israelites of old. It should also come as no surprise to Christians and quite frankly this is also where the biblical name of the holy land comes from, it being Judea.

The problem is as Judea no longer exists, there isn't a non-religious term in use to refer to a atheist descendent of Jacob-Israel. How thus can we refer to one of Jewish decent who isn't a Jew?

This might seem a foolish point to some and especially to some Christians and Jews as the bloodline of Abraham and through him Jacob-Israel are God's chosen people. If this is the case one can't unchoose oneself. Yet this misses the point.

In the current war and politics, names are important. Jew as a word encapsulates both a nationality and a faith, one without the other becomes a nightmare. Identity is part of the nature of a person and if their identity is tied up by a term that doesn't reflect who they are.

Semites

I was talking to a friend earlier today thinking about this post and mentioned the article. I can't remember how we got to that point but he said something that completely broke my understanding.

We talk a lot about antisemitism, so if we can't define secular Israelis as Jews why don't we just call them Semites.

The reason is simple. The term antisemitic is deeply antisemitic.

We are well aware of the term antisemitism as the entire western world is taught the history of the world wars at school. Of the holocaust and the attempted elimination of the Jewish people by the Nazis. We are also constantly told of the problems of antisemitism in the news and the harassment of Jews.

The problem is, semitic doesn't mean Jew, it means of the Semitic race. And contrary to popular belief, Palestinians are a semitic race.

When we use the term antisemitism we are always referring to the persecution of Jews but by definition this is antisemitism as we would never use this term to refer to Arabs or some Ethiopians. The term covers many of the peoples of the middle east and yet we only use the term antisemitic when it comes to Jews and racism when it comes to the rest. Doesn't that strike you as deeply antisemitic.

Back in 2022 Sergey Lavrov, the Russian Foreign minister defending the so-call 'denazification' of Ukraine said of the Ukrainian president Zelensky who is of Jewish decent:

“So what if Zelensky is Jewish. The fact does not negate the Nazi elements in Ukraine. I believe that Hitler also had Jewish blood... some of the worst antisemites are Jews.”

Though the claim about Hitler's bloodline is chaotic and controversial, unintentionally Sergey managed to find a truth; the worst persecutors of the semitic race are Jews... The persecute Palestinians.

Post-script

This article was never intended to come up with answers. It was only to show the problem. I know I have worded it very badly but when the English language begins to fall apart it really does. I don't know what demonym (yes I know the word looks like demon, don't get back to me) should be used for the peoples of Israel, all I know is I don't have the answer and more people need to learn the question.