I see people thinking that semite=Jew, but bear in mind that “semite” was a term created in 1781 by german philologist Ludwig Schlotzer to describe languages that are similar (Arabic, hebrew, Aramaic, etc).
Many other languages are considered semite, and Hebrew was not even the first of them.
If you check in Wikipedia, you can also see how this people migrated over time:
I’m not saying we shouldn’t understand this history, but this is not a good look for supporting Palestine. There are better ways to present the points and this will never be one of them. Palestinians are under attack because of an extremist ideology (Zionism and Christian evangelicals), colorism, colonialism, Islamophobia - not antisemitism.
Also it’s a waste of time to argue, what’s necessary right now is to educate people on the history of this settler-colonialism project.
Words are symbols for meaning, they don’t possess anything in and of themselves. There are certainly times where it’s useful or interesting to dissect and examine the relationships between signifiers, concepts, and reality, but it’s almost never effective as an offensive tactic. Pushing against semantic drift requires massive social power, of which the little power we have is better spent elsewhere.
The symbols that we use to represent concepts are effectively arbitrary (although not random nor devoid of historical residue and material tensions) and a general term may become specific, or split into multiple more specific terms, as concepts grow more complex.
Antisemitism currently signifies hatred and oppression of Jewish people in the vast majority of people’s minds and has for a long time. This hatred and oppression is a material reality that holds a unique place historically and exists regardless of the symbol used to represent it. Not only that, the zionist entity benefits from its exacerbation, since it helps provide an influx of people for its settler colonial project.
We could argue for a regeneralization of the term, spend countless hours arguing about using a different symbol or whatever, and in the mean time the material currents will flow unabated.
Interestingly, the zionist entity also seems to be pushing for a generalization of the term-- although from the angle of what actions qualify as antisemitism-- attempting to reduce concepts of anti-zionism and antisemitism to the same term. In this case it’s the bad-faith semantic dancing that’s characteristic of fascism.
I don’t think I can cosign a message like this. When talking about semetic, people aren’t talking about the language families. They are talking about instead a concept of Jewish people belonging to a Semitic race, race in reference to a racial “science” category. Antisemitism is explicitly anti-Jewish and Islamophobia is inciting hatred against Muslims. I don’t think Jewish people are laying claim to the entire Semetic language family and excluding ones like Arabic, nor do I see any new definition of antisemitism now referring to non-Jews.
This just leads to an ineffective argument that crumbles under pressure. I wouldn’t bother using this concept unless some day all people speaking Semitic languages are lumped together and oppressed by that category. and besides, anti-black and Islamophobic sentiment already does enough lifting to attack both Jews and non-Jews who speak Semitic languages on top of the already-existing antisemitism that was prominent 19th and 20th century.
anti-black and Islamophobic sentiment already does enough lifting to attack both Jews and non-Jews who speak Semitic languages
How? Anti-black and islamophobia are so different from anti-Semititism. I’d like to know how those two things also affect other demographics beyond their main targets (those being B-POC and Muslims)
Imagine someone speaking a Semitic language in public, likely in the United States. Regardless of the language, think about what they look like. They are likely black, from Africa, or they “look” Arab (in American terms, they look like a terrorist). If this person was discriminated against after speaking that language, do you think it’s because of antisemitism? I doubt it.
The antisemitic attacks seen are those against people working in finance/banking, orthodox Jews, synogogues, and “secret society” meetings like the freemason lodges. Conspiracy theory brained at best, explictly vile antisemitism otherwise. We know these stereotypes and they have nothing to do with the Semitic language family.
I don’t believe the attacks on an orthodox Jew is the same as an attack on someone speaking Arabic. The first is antisemitism plain and simple, the latter Islamophobia.
The reason I mentioned blackness is because of the US’ historical targeting of black (black as in African-American here) muslim populations in the country as well as dark-skin and black Muslims from Somalia, Sudan, etc
Even though these attacks are primarily Islamophobic and/or anti-black, it is still true that some Jewish people get caught in the middle of it. But those Jewish people are not targeted due to antisemitism in these particular cases.
Israel is already antisemitic in the modern meaning of the word because of its ongoing genocide of Palestinian Jews - among other Palestinian ethnic communities - in Gaza. We don’t need to bring up semantics from three centuries ago to refute the conspiracy theory that Israel is defending or accepting the entire international Jewish community