prev, the antizionist take is (usually) not that Arabic predates Hebrew as a whole, but rather that modern Hebrew as a whole is a separate language, which is more similar so foreign languages than to "real Hebrew"
as for my response to that, there are a couple of things to unpack here.
modern Hebrew is continuous with older forms of Hebrew - this is no "break". Hebrew was never a "dead" language.
modern Hebrew is closer to ancient Hebrew than modern English is to the English of only a few centuries back. evidently, children speaking modern Hebrew can read the Tanakh without needing to learn ancient Hebrew, and only need a word explained to them here and there.
modern Hebrew is also closer to ancient Hebrew than modern Arabic is to older Arabic. ironically enough, Judeo-Arabic has older roots than the Arabic that is spoken today in most places - because it has Aramaic roots.
throughout the entirety of exile, Hebrew has been used by Jews all around the world, and even developed different subtle quirks in different regions - something which, antizionists usually know to say (as a gotcha), without thinking of how it goes against the claim that Hebrew "wasn't spoken" slash "was only liturgical". a purely liturgical language does not develop differently in different regions - see, for instance, the liturgical dialect of Arabic.
due to this, one thing that WAS required for the revitalization of Hebrew, was some type of a merge between these subtle differences. which, personally, i think we did rather poorly. but that could be its own post, and my opinion is of much of a minority anyways (as i've been proved here enough times). either way, considering the fact that this was arguably the first case of language revitalization... i mean - is the alternative of letting a language die any better?
one thing that Hebrew was used less for, was constructing new ideas. that already began to change towards the end of the second exile, WAY before Eliezer Ben Yehuda (which is given the title of the mind behind the revitalization of Hebrew by both Zionists and antizionists, which is its own exaggeration).
yes, the revitalization of Hebrew required "borrowing" words from other languages - same way that all languages do. how does one say "television" in Arabic? or "queue" in English? thing is, Hebrew had a lot of ground to cover, since for some time it was used less for creating new ideas, some more modern concepts didnt have proper Hebrew terminology. which brings me to my next point-
modern Hebrew actually attempted to prefer Hebrew words other foreign ones. we have words for scientific terms which are often universalized in other places, e.g. sickness names. the fun thing about Semetic languages is that they're root-pattern based, and can easily derive words from other words. the modern Hebrew word for "texting" is derived from the word for "writing", the word for "airplane" is derived from the word for "air", etc.
if anything, modern Hebrew borrowed most from Aramaic - tho the same can be said about the Hebrew used in the time of Baith Sheni. if anything, modern Hebrew uses LESS Aramaic nowadays.
in general, you gotta love (sarcasm) the take that "language revitalization is a tool of colonization". it's just so incredibly harmful on the linguistic aspect of things. it opens the gate for pushing down other attempts of revitalization, too. take Wales, who took inspiration from the revitalization of Hebrew, to try and preserve Welsh. take Aboriginal people who took inspiration to try and revitalize their own languages. the revitalization of Hebrew had a good balance of new and old (or rather, old with a sparkle of new) which plenty of people who are connected to endangered languages, could learn from. this new* gen z insistence that the revitalization of Hebrew is Evil™, these people are discouraged to learn - practically endangering minority languages further. [*new from the western point of view, i will not get into the USSR - tho it is tempting, i am simply not knowledgeable enough on that topic].
Arabic is used in the vast majority of the Middle East. Hebrew, however, is only used in one tiny are. if your take is, "i want to destroy a language spoken by a tiny minority of people and replace it with one spoken towards the greater region" then congrats, you're imperialist, and by extension, hold strictly colonial worldviews. OWN UP TO IT.
Yiddish and Ladino developed from Hebrew, not the other way around.
the very fact that Jews have developed their own languages (again, from Hebrew!) in different regions is already an indicator that Jews are an ethnicity, not merely a religion. how many religions are out there who developed their own languages, which are not linked to any ethnic group? none. because a religion is a set of cultural bindings - whether they're held by one primary ethnic group (ethnoreligeons) or were imposed on large regions by brute force (e.g. christianity, islam). Arabic is not the language of the muslims, it is the language of the Arabs. whose language is Yiddish - the Yidden's? oh what do you know - Jews'. and if one's trying to claim that Hebrew is the language of the Hebrew, not the Jews - see next point.
the Jews are the Hebrews. our ethnicity was referred to as "Hebrew" through the majority of history, hell - some places still call us Hebrews today. (hate to be linking Wikipedia here, but you can check the references).
when antizionist refer to Hebrew "stealing" from Arabic, they dont usually refer to adapted roots (e.g. the root n.z.l which means to go down in Arabic being adapted into Hebrew to describe liquids), but rather to one of two things: to grammar (which was not adapted from Arabic what so ever - Hebrew grammar has remained roughly the same as it was, with the major change being in the future tense (chapter4)), or to Israeli slang, which - and i cannot emphasize this enough - was made as a result of people fleeing from Arab-lead countries, as i mentioned above.
Yiddish and Ladino were only spoken by Jews in specific areas, while Hebrew is spoken by most Jews worldwide. so, when these Jews moved to Eretz Yisrael, they had one language which is to some extent "nobody's first language, but everybody's second". it was the obvious choice.
mocking the revitalization of Hebrew does nothing but achieve two results. one, is the mocking of Jewish heritage; which is something that antizionists will never care about. the other, is pulling down other endangered languages and chances of revitalizing them - which is something that antizionists will never realize.
in simple terms - people could achieve so much more had they only accepted the fact that Jews (/ Hebrews / Israelites / Israelis / whatever current name they use to hate us under) are people. who they could even learn from. it's... quite frustrating, honestly.
there. i got it off my chest. hopefully i can stop being angry about these people for a bit now.
romaincrisis
jbbartram-illu
jacobvanloon
ellievsbear
kianamaiart
