The Case of the Anti-Israel Dictionary
Israellycool
reader Andrew has forwarded a mail from a friend of his, who points out
that when you look up the word “annex” in the UK version of
www.ask.com, this
is what you get:
annex
noun1.
an addition that extends a main building
verb
1.
take illegally, as of territory: “The Israelis are annexing more and more territory on the West
Bank “
2. take
(territory) by conquest: “Hitler annexed Lithuania
”
3. attach
to
His friend
continues:
Even more offensive than thesuggestion that Israel has illegally taken territory on the West Bank
and that it is continuing to take more and more is the juxtaposition of
verb 1 next to verb 2. The implicit comparison of Israel with
Nazi Germany is about as repugnant and offensive as it gets.
In fact, if you read it closely, Israel appears in a somewhat worse
light than Nazi Germany i.e. Israel stole territory, Hitler won
it!
Apparently, the “dictionary” employed by Ask.com
(at least in the UK ) is WordNet 2.1 Copyright 2005 by Princeton
University .
Different versions of the same software
seem to give slightly different definitions.
Has
anyone come across this “dictionary” before?
Indeed, has anyone ever seen such perverse use of dictionary
“illustrations”?
No and no.
Andrew’s friend suggests writing to both Ask and
Wordnet/Princeton Uni to complain. I’ll be doing that, and I encourage
you to do the same.
About the Author
An Aussie immigrant to Israel, Aussie Dave is founder of Israellycool, one of the world's most popular pro-Israel blogs (and the one you are currently reading) He is a happy family man, and a lover of steak, Australian sports and girlie drinksFiled Under: General
How despicable. Maybe the dictionary/site is run by former Nazis! But given the fact that so much of Europe is now Muslim (France being majority Muslim) it’s probably just one of them, hiding behind more of their propaganda/lies.
Went to WordNet Search (http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn), typed in “annex”, got the following which has no use of Israel in an example – apparently either Princeton cleaned it up quickly, or there are different versions of WordNet for different sections of the globe.
KEY: “S:” = Show Synset (semantic) relations, “W:” = Show Word (lexical) relations
Noun
* S: (n) annex, annexe, extension, wing (an addition that extends a main building)
Verb
* S: (v) annex (take (territory) as if by conquest) “Hitler annexed Lithuania”
* S: (v) annex (attach to)
In addition to this being offensive, it shows the blatant ignorance of history and facts typically displayed by the anti-Israel set.
Wasn’t it Jordan that annexed the west bank after the 1948 war?
Here the Israel example appears as well:
http://www.wordnet-online.com/annex.shtml
But not here:
http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
Now, the first site says that “WordNet-Online.com is based on WordNet 2.0.”. But the Princeton site has been updated to “WordNet 2.1″, version in which the example about Israel seems to have been eliminated, perhaps because of other complaints… Not clear who wrote the original sentence, though.
Zeno
hey American Babe, you seem to be as racist towards muslims as you profess the dictionary author to be. You all make good company. It should be easy for you to understand the mindset of the dictionary author: you share it. It is just as despicable for you to assume its muslims and insult a whole religion like you did. How can you expect anyone to respect your religion when you have no respect for other religions yourself?
No need to blame Muslims for this. I have informed Ask.com and I may take some action against them. A few comments in the right media outlets will have the required effect.
given the amount of hatred and antisemitism in the muslim world today, it is just normal that european zevel will cry over poor muslims. soon europe will be speaking arabic anyway. it makes sense to suck up to them.
this is supposed to be a reply? It is nonsensical.
Ask.com removed the term from it’s dictionary search within 24 hours.
http://uk.ask.com/web?q=annex&tool=dic&qsrc=1&o=0&l=dir
The page linked to above is not being referenced by the dictionary search and thus unreachable by most users.