Can You Spell Bigoted?

Miriam Mogilevsky

"Zionists' relentless attempts for world domination may lead to a new Jewish
holocaust."

"Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state."

"The Israeli occupation will never respect the human rights or civil rights of the
people."

Most of us are, unfortunately, familiar with such statements. We've had to

respond to them, clarify them, and sit in class with people who support them.

These three sentences could've come from an anti-Israel Facebook group or blog,
but they didn't. They came from an otherwise reputable online dictionary called
YourDictionary.com.

According to the site, it was chosen for a “Best of the Web” award from Forbes
Magazine, and has been “recommended” by the Washington Post. The site is clear
and well-designed, and looks professional.

However, as recently as last June, any of YourDictionary.com's 100,000 daily

visitors could look up a word and find example sentences like the three listed
above. The definitions of words like “holocaust”, “apartheid”, and “occupation”
were technically correct, but the writers' opinions were also clearly defined in the
sentences following them.

The bigotry doesn't end there, though. If you look up “Jew” on YourDictionary.com,
the first entry says that this word is a transitive verb, and defines it as “to
swindle; cheat; gyp”. Maybe I'm just naïve, but I never knew that the name of my
religion is a verb. Besides, shouldn't the noun form, used much more frequently,
be listed first?

The next entry tells me that to “jew someone down” is to “get or bargain for
better terms from someone in a business transaction, esp. in a petty or niggardly
way.” The last entry for Jew is the noun, the only correct use of the term.

The statement at the bottom of the site's home page says, "The word usage
examples above have been gathered from various sources to reflect current and
historical usage. They do not represent the opinions of YourDictionary.com."
According to the site's “About” page, its definitions are "exclusive Webster's New
World dictionary definitions".

In July, Ami Isseroff found out about this and wrote a post on the ZioNation blog
about it. He listed examples of YourDictionary.com's antisemitic sentence
examples and definitions, and posted contact info for the site's administrators so
that the blog's readers could ask that the antisemitic material be taken down. In
the post, he advised, “Do not accuse them of 'anti-Semitism,' even if it is
obviously true. Anti-Semites know what they are, but of course they will deny it.”

The CEO of YourDictionary.com, Howard Love, responded promptly and

responsibly by removing most of the offensive material. In a comment on the
ZioNation blog, he explained that the sentence examples had been chosen by
computer.

“We were fortunate in that the CEO was cooperative and responsive,” says Ami
Isseroff. “The problem, according to him, was due to use of a mass text database
for the examples, evidently culled from the Web. If that is true, what it shows is
that anti-Israeli, anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic rhetoric have thoroughly permeated
the Web.”

Ami goes on to point out that although he has not studied the problem in detail,
he has not noticed such antagonism against any other group in the world. “The
Web community and modern culture have developed a level of tolerance for
abuse of Israel, Zionism and Jews that goes beyond that for any other group, it
seems,” he added.

Meanwhile, the strange definitions of the word “Jew” remain on

YourDictionary.com, and, curiously, the word “antisemitism” is not defined in the
dictionary.

We're used to seeing biased Wikipedia articles, blog posts, Youtube videos, and
Facebook groups, but dictionary definitions are a new way to spread
misinformation about Jews and Israel. And that's the unfortunate thing about the
Internet: anyone can state a falsehood in Wikipedia with anonymity and impunity,
and the same goes for dictionary definitions. I can't imagine reading something
like this in a printed, published dictionary, because the authors would probably
lose their jobs.

For anyone who just needs to find some definitions and isn't planning on learning
about Zionism or Israel's policies towards Palestinians, YourDictionary.com is a
perfectly adequate reference tool...but I think I'll stick with my trusty Merriam-
Webster's.