From: Paktor@cup.portal.com (David L Paktor)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.mideast
Subject: Re: Anti-semitism...
Date: 8 Apr 92 13:03:15 GMT
Organization: The Portal System (TM)


Anti-Semitism.  My good ol' reliable Webster's Collegiate, vintage '61
    gives:  "Opposition to, hatred of, or agitation against, Jews."
    with no etymology.  Clear, but not very satisfying.

So let's dig deeper:  I am excerpting from Alan Dershowitz's recent and
    well-researched book, "Chutzpah", page 109.

    The term "anti-Semitism" ... is of relatively recent vintage ... .
	"Anti-Semitism" was coined not by Jews, as a term of censure
	against those who practiced this form of bigotry, but rather by
	those who approved of anti-Jewish attitudes, as a term of pride.
	Wilhelm Marr, a German racist politician, is "credited"	with coin-
	ing the term.  He established the "Anti-Semitic League" in 1879.
	The term quickly caught on, though it did not aptly capture the
	essence of the bigotry or its religious origins.
    The new term "anti-Semitism" did, however, correspond to a relatively
	new development in European politics:  namely, the phenomenon of
	anti-Jewish political parties in Germany, France, Austria, Hungary,
	Poland, Romania, and Russia.  "Christian-Social," "Catholic People's
	Party," "Christian Democratic Movement," and "United Christians"
	became euphemisms for "no Jews allowed," and "anti-Jewish platforms."
	Though these parties retained, through their pseudo-religious names,
	a tie to their religiously bigoted predecessors, their anti-Jewish
	programs were based more on notions of nationalism, ethnicity, and
	'volk'.  Other parties took on even more specifically programmatic
	names, such as Anti-Semitic People's Party, French National Anti-
	Semitic League, Universal Anti-Semitic League, and National Anti-
	Jewish Party.
    These overtly anti-Semitic parties played an important role in European
	politics for approximately seventy years, beginning in the 1870s
	and ending with the destruction of the Third Reich.  They preached a
	more "racial," "biological," and "nationalistic" brand of anti-Jewish
	bigotry -- Jewish racial enmity -- than did their religiously driven
	predecessors.  The Enlightenment made theoligical anti-Judaism some-
	what anachronistic.  But there was still a large residue of anti-
	Jewish feeling in search of a justification or theory.  The new,
	more racial anti-Semitism provided that.

Okay, so now we see the history of the term.  It was a propogandistic, inten-
    tional misnomer, intended to give a patina of "scientific respectability"
    to institutionalized hatred of Jews.

Taken in its historical context, therefore, the phrase: "Arab anti-Semitism"
    has no element of self-contradiction at all.  The "Semites" to which the
    term was coined to refer, are Jews, exclusively.

Of course, taken at face value, and literally, we are both, Jews and Arabs,
    (and, indeed, all of the descendants of Abraham), entitled to lay claim
    to the name of "Semites", due to the fact that Abraham was directly
    descended (by some nine or so generations), from Shem, the son of Noah.

When Arab leaders -- (the Mufti of Jerusalem, Y'Sh, comes most readily to
    mind) -- allied themselves with Hitler and the Nazis in a campaign of
    extermination against the Jews, that was a prime example and an active
    expression of Arab anti-Semitism, in the first, historic, sense.

But have no fear, Arab cousins.  The term might still have been applied to
    yourselves, as well.  Let there be no doubt in your minds that, if the
    Nazis had succeeded in their goals against the Jews, then the Arabs would
    be the next ones to be accorded the status of 'untermenschen', and to
    be targeted for extermination.

Wherever there is anti-Semitism, in its original, historic sense of hatred
    directed against Jews exclusively, then the broader, more literal sense
    of anti-Semitism, in which Arabs are included to be hated, can not be
    far behind.


David

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  === Mister Systems ===    |  And pray that there's intelligent life
      David L Paktor        |  Somewhere out in space,
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Newsgroups: talk.politics.mideast