By Schmoel Yitzhak
A couple of popular terms disgust me.
One is anti-semite.
It's too vague; not to the point.
The point is Jew-hating; that's what anti-semitism is all about so why not call it like it is?
An anti-semite is a Jew-hater; no more, no less; so let's do away with soft euphemisms, if you don't mind.
No less annoying to me -- annoying, by the way, is an understatement -- is the term settlement.
Sorry, I'm not referring to 19th Century outposts in North Dakota but rather 21st Century places where Jews live in Judea and Samaria.
What's with this "settlement" nonsense?
These "settlements" are not log cabins nor thatched huts on the prairie.
They are apartment houses, homes with lawns and garages; just the kind you would find in Manhattan, Levittown, Orange County and even County Cork in Ireland.
Because Jew-hating has become epidemic in our universe, homes in which Israeli Jews happen to live in the West Bank get dubbed "settlements."
Why?
Well for one thing it's a convenient way for the world's Israei-bashers to attempt to delegitimize the Middle East's only legitimate democracy.
Settlers?
To hell with that; these are Jews living in homes that they either built or are renting; no more, no less. They are not "settlers." They are Jewish people living in dwellings.
But so many of the world's politicians have trouble swallowing the idea of Jews living in Samaria and Judea that they feel obliged to refer to them as settlers.
Whether the term "settler" comes from the mouth of Barack Obama or Hilary Clinton, it is instantly equated with second-class citizen; or a person who does not belong in that home in that particular part of the land -- because he or she is Jewish.
So, until the "settler" label is erased from the media, the White House or any other house, I propose that every Arab living in Israel be dubbed "settler" as well.
With that, let the American president, should then demand a freeze on all Arab settlement construction in Israel.
Well, I can dream, can't I!
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