What is the difference between anti-semitism and anti-zionism?

Answer 1

Anti-Semitism is a hatred, revulsion, or denigration of Jewish people and a belief that those people are somehow (by dint of their genetics) more violent, conniving, mischievous, and dastardly than other people. In some cases, like the Nazis or Extremist Muslims, they are considered a "sub-human" race, on par with monkeys. Almost all Anti-Semites are not Jews for the simple reason that no person would willingly consider himself a putrid thing.

Anti-Zionism is a rejection of Zionism. Zionism is merely Jewish Nationalism, the belief that Jews have a right to have their own country where they can determine their own future. Zionists can be both Jews and non-Jews and Anti-Zionists can be both Jews and non-Jews, because the question of whether the Jews have a right to a state is a political question. Since the Jews were able to create such a country, Israel, Anti-Zionism is usually seen as Anti-Israel sentiment.

It is important to note that there are those who wish to argue that Anti-Semitism does not apply exclusively to Jews (since there are non-Jewish Semites), but the term Anti-Semite has never been used to describe anything but Jew-hatred. Additionally, people like to claim that Zionism is a code word for an international cabal of evil Jews trying to control the world. Aside from the fact that such a cabal does not exist, such a thing would fall under Anti-Semitism, not Zionism or Anti-Zionism since this cabal would not be concerned with Jewish Nationalism.

Answer 2

There is no actual thing called "Semitism". Anti-Semitism is he hatred of Jews.

In the middle of the 1800s, Europeans who hated Jews argued that Jews had a conspiracy to take over Europe and destroy Europe's Christian Europe. (Some conspiracy theories never die.) However, the term Zionism had not yet entered the lexicon, so there was the need to invent a term for this evil Jewish intent and the word chosen was "Semitismus" or "Semitism", which derived from the fact that the Jews' being Semites (as opposed to Europeans) made them opposed to Europeans. Therefore, the fight against this conspiracy was called "Anti-Semitism". The term has since become much more popular than the previous term of Judenhass for Jew-hatred. (Of course, Zionism does not refer to this kind of cabal either, but the existence of such a term made it much easier for Anti-Semites to pretend that they do not hate Jews, but rather the "cabal of Zionists".)

Answer 3

Anti-semitism is one specific form of racism.

Answer 4

The word antisemitism was coined by a German as a nicer, scientific sounding substitute for the older German word Judenhass (Jew hatred), a word that sounded a bit ugly even in the mid 19th century. You could shave straws and say that antisemitism is about hatred of Jews, while anti-Judaism is about opposition to the religion, as in "I love Jews, it's the religion I hate." Modern antisemites sometimes deny that they are antisemitic because they don't hate all semites, saying "After all, Arabs are semites and I don't hate Arabs." That's a classic example of dodging the issue