[Apparpsmose]

interesting. how do you define an 'apologist'?

I think you dislike the term.
I too had the same reaction to this term, many years ago.

I suspect the following might have happened.

Christian preachers might have tried their preaching skills on Jewish people also.
Seeing the versatility of Christian preachers it will be a quick wind up for Judaism.
The fact that Christianity has slightly more truth to it would only help the process.

Now Jewish people are the chosen one, aren't they.
They specialize is intellectually overwhelming their adversary.
That is what they did to Christianity earlier - by getting them to accept the old testament as their own.
In the phase under consideration they made another onslaught of intellectual kind on Christianity.
Or Christian preachers, to be more specific.
They convinced them that proselytizing is bad, evil and wrong.
And the Christian preachery capitalized.
They accepted that proselytizing is indeed bad, evil and wrong.
For all their achievements the Christian intelligentsia is a poor lamb when it comes face to face with Jewish chosen-ness.

So what do the Christian preachers do?
Well they do not say Dawah. They do not have a word for that.
They call their Dawah apologetics.

And hence the words of this kind are the more common ones which we hear.

PS: My post was gobbled up by power failure yesterday so I apologize if the post sounds belated.