I just don't understand why people are attached to it
Because words aren't racist, people and opinions and sentiments expressed by them are.
When the term ricing is used for so long and 95%+ of people don't know where it came from and have zero negative connotations associated with it, your argument (from their perspective) sounds like this:
"Don't use the term, by its obscure origin you didin't even know about it is racist"
"I've been saying it for years without any racism intended nor perceived"
"bro ~~it's been~~ you are being a fucking racist for years"
And then you are surprised by the negative reaction...
Yes, that's a funny tale. And polemic bullshit...
In reality anti-semitism is still wide-spread, no one needs to turn those people. But for quite some time it wasn't acceptable to say that bullshit out loud. And now a lot of those people are even willing to support a terror organisation like Hamas implicitly or openly, because that gives them the chance to finally have a justification to express their anti-semitism openly again.
When an UN commissioner openly talks about all "media being controlled by the Jewish lobby" you don't need any made-up excuse like "they are critical about us, so they must be anti-semite" anymore. That guy is an actual anti-semite, shown by parroting a century old anti-semitic conspiracy about their secret world control.
And it's even worse. People like you are part of the problem. As long as there are easy to see anti-semites among Israel's critics, but you prefer to ignore them, it's actually easier for Israel to run with the bullshit story of how all criticism is anti-semitic and anti-Israel. Because the easiest way to lie is to hide it between some truths.
Get rid of obvious anti-semites among critics that anyone can clearly spot -unless you are a total moron or antisemite yourself- and suddenly your criticism seems so much more valid and is not vulnerable anymore to being attacked as antisemitsm, something Israel's propaganda departments will happily exploit. Fail to do so and you look just like a moron/anti-semite, actually helping Israel's bullshit PR by devaluating your own arguments.