Source: The New York Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-jacoby12apr12,1,3486378.story
On April 11, 2004 the Los Angeles Times reported, "Merriam-Webster found itself on the defensive recently over a 40-year-old definition of 'anti-Semitism' in its Third New International Dictionary, the monumental unabridged edition originally published in 1961 and reprinted in 2002. In addition to the conventional sense of the word as "hostility toward Jews as a racial or religious minority group," the dictionary included a second sense as 'opposition to Zionism: sympathy with opponents of the state of Israel.' A few weeks ago, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee asked Merriam-Webster to remove the second sense of the word and to insert a correction sheet into the current printings. But a company spokesman defended the definition as 'a relic' based on a handful of citations from about 1950 in which anti-Semitism was 'linked more or less strongly with opposition to Israel or to Zionism.' He said that the sense wasn't supported by current usage, and added that it would probably be dropped when the company publishes a new unabridged version in a decade or so. (The modern college editions based on Webster's Third all omit the second definition of "anti-Semitism.") Others, though, defended the current relevance of the definition and urged the publisher to keep it. Ken Jacobson, the associate national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said defining anti-Semitism as 'opposition to Zionism' was 'close enough to be a legitimate definition.' 'Zionism is the national expression of the Jewish people,' he said, 'and to deny that, it seems to me, most often reflects anti-Semitic views.'"