A senior Cabinet minister says Israel plans to build more than 3,300 new homes in settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank in response to a fatal Palestinian shooting attack
  • catloaf@lemm.eeEnglish
    143·
    9 months ago

    There isn’t any Israeli language and there wasn’t even an Israel at all until the early 1900s (no, the Kingdom of Israel isn’t the same thing).

    I know he’s not arguing in good faith, but even this is obviously not a valid argument.

    • roastedDeflator@kbin.social
      95·
      9 months ago

      I totally see point. Maybe if Hebrew was called an Israeli language it would have been a more accurate term?

      Ghil’ad Zuckermann, a 35-year-old graduate of Tel Aviv University with doctorates from Oxford and Cambridge, argues that modern Hebrew should be renamed “Israeli” and give up its claim of pure descent from holy writ.
      “Israelis are brainwashed to believe they speak the same language as (the prophet) Isaiah, a purely Semitic language, but this is false,” Zuckermann told Reuters during a lecture tour to promote his soon-to-be-published polemic “Hebrew as Myth”.

      For Zuckermann, the proof of linguistic discontinuity between ancient and modern Israel is that Hebrew had to be revived, by 19th-century Zionist pioneers and lexicographers, after 1,700 years in which it was no one’s native tongue.

      from Hebrew or Israeli? Linguist stirs Zionist debate - Reuters - 2007