“The compound anti‐Semitism appears to have been used first by Steinschneider, who challenged Renan on account of his ‘anti‐Semitic prejudices’ [i.e., his derogation of the “Semites” as a race]. […] As an independent concept, however, the word is not encountered until the end of 1879, when the Antisemites’ League was founded (according to a correspondent’s report in the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums, October 19, 1879).”

The quibbling over the term’s misnomial use is rather moot since it is hardly unusual for hatred of Jews to overlap with hatred of Arabs. The tendency to liken Muslims to Judaists (as documented in Jewish Muslims: How Christians Imagined Islam as the Enemy) is prototypical of this, and more recently there was an incident only a few years ago when some Zionists almost assaulted a taxi driver because he looked Arab instead of Ashkenazi, so he had to loudly clarify that he was Jewish. Zionism may not harm Jews as harshly as Arab gentiles, but Zionism’s harm to Arab gentiles does have an echoic effect on many (especially lower‐class) Jews.

Furthermore, there are plenty of respectful, well educated Judaists who do admit to the existence of irreligious Jews and ethnic Jews, because a common Jewish tradition is that if at least your mother is Jewish, then so are you, even if you have never practised Judaism before. This is a tradition that predates the ethnonationalist fad of the long 19th century, and it is unnecessary to argue that Judaists are ‘racist’ for agreeing with or maintaining this tradition.

I feel like this topic is turning into another one of those ‘white Jews aren’t oppressed anymore’ dramafests, so I may consider locking or eliminating it soon as such discussions are rarely productive.