Stop Saying "Jewish" and "Jew" - You Are Judean
This may be controversial, I don't know - but please hear me out. I think it's time we started phasing out and objecting to the terms "Jew" and "Jewish" for ourselves; and for that matter, "antisemitism" as the word for racism/xenophobia against us. This may be rather radical to some, but it really isn't if you look at the approach other indigenous peoples have had to this same problem. It is more respectful to call Diné people Diné than "Navajo", for instance; I myself am half Amazigh, and while the term "Berber" still sees use, it is widely being rejected as disrespectful. I am convinced it's time for Judeans - Yehudim - to follow this approach. The words "Jew" and "Jewish" (or, for that matter, their equivalents in most languages of peoples who oppressed us) were not our creations, and while we have put substantial time into getting comfortable using them (whether it be through the insistence on "Jewish people" or even reclaiming old slurs like "Jewess"), I think it's time we accepted that they've done more harm to us than good.
Calling us "Jews", "Juden", "Juifs", etc., has so often been used as a slur, and more than just that: it actively distances us from our roots in a way that's made our sociopolitical alienation easier. "Jewish" also has myriad problems; how many times have we heard ignorant Judeophobes insist that we aren't "real" Jews/Israelites/Hebrews - merely "Jew-ish". It's distortions like these that have made the job of those hostile to us easy, and our job in combating them all the more frustrating. A "Jew" has no country, can be called "just a religion", can be called "the Jew" as if a mere abstraction, an object. "Jewish" people - even if recognized as people - need not truly be what we claim to be. Our own indigenous name for ourselves - Yehudi, Yisrael - generally does not share these problems. It can't be said that a Yehudi is "-ish". A Judean is very unambiguously of Judea, just as a Russian is of Russia or a Japanese person is of Japan; or a Diné of Dinétah; or an Amazigh is of Tamazgha.
Antisemitism is another term that was invented by our oppressors, and has been twisted more recently to use as another form of identity-denial. Antisemitism as an imagined form of racism against "Semites" may have made sense in the 19th Century when A.) the only real "Semites" familiar to Europeans were Judeans, and B.) "Semite" was conceived of as a "race", but in the 21st Century there is absolutely no reason to keep using a term that is routinely misunderstood to be applicable to any and all "Semites". Judeophobia is a far better term for prejudice against Judeans; and it makes it seem less exotic/exclusive. Judeophobia is of a kind with Sinophobia, homophobia, etc. "Antisemitism" is an antiquated, ambiguous word whose utility to fight Judeophobia has been outweighed by its utility to the Judeophobes themselves.
Seldom would you hear "Judean" used as a slur. "The Jew" is an alien; might as well be another species. But the Judean is just somebody who comes from Judea. And all Yehudim and Shamerim are Am Yisrael - we're all Israelis, by tribe, if not by citizenship. In the same way someone might say they are Han Chinese, we can (and should) say that we're Judean Israeli. The same phrasing is even attested in our historic texts - in the Talmudic period, Judean Israeli was exactly the name we used. We're now in an era of decolonization: Eretz Yisrael is now home to Medinat Yisrael, so we as Am Yisrael should embrace the new paradigm - seriously engage with what that means for our identity as the land's First Nation, and remind the world what we're actually called.
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