The play is not about Israel but instead tells the story of a Jewish man preserving his family’s traditions in a village in imperial Russia at the turn of the 20th century. The performance on Monday went ahead as planned after the protest at the cafe.
“This is a performance of Fiddler on the Roof,” they wrote alongside footage of the protesters. “So, if you’re busy condemning racist demonstrations, but not this, & you don’t think they should be prosecuted, stop preening yourself. You’re happy with racism – it’s only the target that you worry about.”
The article doesn’t have any statements from the protestors about why they were protesting there. Seems like a glaringly obvious omission.
Also, Palestinians are Semites…
That’s not what antisemitism means. This is like thinking that antipasto means someone is opposed to Pasto. Two different words.
Not a good example. Anti = before, pasto = meal. Antipasto is what you eat before the main dish. Whether people have meant antisemitism to mean specifically Jewish persons (a bad reading), the fact remains that Arabs are Semites and Palestinians are Arabs.
This article has nothing to do with Semites. You are wandering down a pointless thought experiment, and likely attempting to derail the conversation. I can understand your confusion; antisemitism as a word is historically derived from the same root as Semite, much as “antipasto” and “pastor” are derived from the same Latin root, although they have no common meaning today. Antisemitism is and has always been a specific prejudice against Jews.
Merriam-Webster | Oxford | Cambridge | Dictionary.com | Collins | American Heritage | The Atlantic (article)
You are wandering down a pointless thought experiment, and likely attempting to derail the conversation.
That was something you just made up.
If you want to throw a definition at me that shows that antisemitism only applies to Jewish persons, then I can just as easily show you a definition that the word “literally” now means “really a lot” as in “I literally died when I heard that”. Language use changes.
What on earth are you talking about? You give me an awful lot of credit if you think I made up EVERY dictionary. I don’t think I missed any except for the community forums like wiktionary and urbandictionary. Of course language changes. That’s why professional linguists are employed by professional dictionaries to study the language and why words are frequently added or changed. That doesn’t mean words mean whatever you feel like at the moment.
You understood the use of the word in the article. You are trying to derail the conversation to make it about etymology rather than the subject of the news. You are wasting my time, as I’ve already sent you links to SIX dictionaries and an article in a major publication. You sent nothing but your personal feelings.
Just as an fyi it’s first use is in 1881 as interchangeably anti Judaic and anti semitic.
The use of anti semitic to mean anti Judaic is in fact bigoted as fuck. The word is literally taken from a racist who thought openly that Arabs were lesser than a Jew and didn’t care he was throwing them under the bus right alongside Jews. Just say anti Judaic since it’s actually accurate to an inarguable level and doesn’t make some weird bigoted class system.
I don’t know whether or not they’re antisemitic, but they do need to read the fucking room.
It is absolutely antisemitic. Fiddler on the Roof is about the Jewish culture and has nothing to do with Zionism or Israel.
This would be like protesting against Saudi Arabia actions at an Eid festival.
I’m Jewish (I’m even a mod in our Jewish community here on lemmy.world) and I am very sensitive to antisemitism, but there is also a lot of ignorance which you can call a form of soft bigotry if you like, but it does not rise to something I would consider antisemitism.
It could very well be that this was a case of a bunch of ignorant people.
Someone else suggested (based on the article itself) that it may have been coincidental and the protest just happened to be in the vicinity of the musical.
Or they were a bunch of antisemites.
I don’t feel like I have enough information to judge.
While we’re all tip-toeing around the criticize Israel minefield, remember that the Zionists don’t pay any attention to these rules. They’ll couch Israeli policy in Judaism as it suits them. And they’ll raise antisemitism as a bludgeon and the Shoah as a shield.
It’s a big disadvantage when only one side is nervous about appearing as a racist monster while the other is breaking new ground in bigotry and monstrosity.
