NationStates Jolt Archive

The term "anti-semetic" has been taken to mean prejudice against Jews and the Jewish people. However, the Semetic language family (from which the label comes) also includes Arabic and a few other languages... how does anyone else feel about the inaccuracy of the standardized label "anti-semetic"?

Too often people equate anti-Israel with anti-Semitic or anti-Jew. There was a time (it's getting better now) when you could hardly criticize Israeli foreign policy without being shunned as the reincarnation of Hitler.

i always frown when people say the arabs are anti semitic. doesnt make much sense

i think that one can be anti jewish and feel just fine about all the other semitic people of the world

i guess its more of a discounting of the existance of arabs than anything else

*blink* You mean there are some people who think 'He had it coming' is NOT a valid reason for rocket-blasting an 80 year old blind, deaf, paraplegic while at his morning prayer? Cretins! :mad:

The term "anti-semetic" has been taken to mean prejudice against Jews and the Jewish people. However, the Semetic language family (from which the label comes) also includes Arabic and a few other languages... how does anyone else feel about the inaccuracy of the standardized label "anti-semetic"?

*shrug* Words change and evolve. Some words crop up that may only be marginally related to their root words.

http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Anti-Semitism

The political writer Wilhelm Marr is credited with coining the German word Antisemitismus in 1873, at a time when racial science was fashionable in Germany but religious prejudice was not. This term was offered as an alternative to the older German word Judenhass, meaning Jew-hating, but did nothing to lessen Marr's reputation as an anti-Semite. (See also the coinage of the term Palestinian by Germans to refer to the nation or people known as Jews, as distinct from the religion of Judaism.)

So far as can be ascertained, the word was first printed in 1881. In that year Marr published "Zwanglose Antisemitische Hefte," and Wilhelm Scherer used the term "Antisemiten" in the "Neue Freie Presse" of January. The related word semitism was coined around 1885.

Originally, the term referred to prejudice towards Jews alone, and not to people who speak semitic languages as a whole (e.g., Arabs). For nearly a century this has been the only use of this word. In recent decades, however, some people have argued that the the term anti-Semitism should be extended to include prejudice against Arabs, since Arabic is a semitic language but this usage has not been widely adopted.

Here we see that anti-Semitism was actually coined BEFORE semitism!

Currently, anti-Semitism remains by-and-large a specific reference to hostility or hatred for Jews. I personally see no inherent reason for this to change. Should the term's usage come to be widely applicable to both Jews and Arabs in the future, I don't think it will affect me much. Anti-semites will continue to exist, regardless of nomenclature. Alan Dershowitz has suggested that future anti-Semites be called "Judeopaths", for accuracy's sake.