Did everyone forget that Palestinians are semitic people?
this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2024
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Everyone is forgetting Palestinians are people in general
This is not intended to defend Israel. From what I'm seeing, what Israel is doing here is heinous. For example, the mass graves at al-Shifa hospital.
This is just intended to point out that the modern usage of the term "anti-semitic" has come to mean "anti-jewish", even if that doesn't really fit with the older history of the word "Semitic".
From the Wikipedia article on "Semitic People":
Semitic people or Semites is an obsolete term for an ethnic, cultural or racial group associated with people of the Middle East, including Arabs, Jews, Akkadians, and Phoenicians. The terminology is now largely unused outside the grouping "Semitic languages" in linguistics.
...
The terms "anti-Semite" or "antisemitism" came by a circuitous route to refer more narrowly to anyone who was hostile or discriminatory towards Jews in particular.
...
In 1879, the German journalist Wilhelm Marr began the politicisation of the term by speaking of a struggle between Jews and Germans in a pamphlet called Der Weg zum Siege des Germanenthums über das Judenthum ("The Way to Victory of Germanism over Judaism"). He accused the Jews of being liberals, a people without roots who had Judaized Germans beyond salvation. In 1879, Marr's adherents founded the "League for Anti-Semitism", which concerned itself entirely with anti-Jewish political action.
Objections to the usage of the term, such as the obsolete nature of the term "Semitic" as a racial term, have been raised since at least the 1930s.
So Israel is using the Nazi's definition of Semite. Pretty sure the logic to stop using that would be the same as the reason we stopped giving credence to the Nazi's definition of Aryan.
I've seen this pop up a few times, so it's likely (hopefully) something you are just ignorantly repeating, but it has to be said that the entire idea of reframing a well-established term like antisemitism, as helpfully laid out by @Vorticity, is extremely damaging and troubling. Whoever came up with it in very recent years solely did it in order to hurt Jews, in order to downplay the very real issue of exploding global antisemitism (even before the October 7 massacres) and sow confusion.
'in recent years'
This isn't something that people came up with recently. It's been the established definition forever. What you're doing is attempting to conflate the goals of Arabs with the goals of the nazi party.
Here's some historical context to chew on:
"Nazi harassment of Arabs began as early as 1932, where members of the Egyptian Student Association in Graz, Austria reported to the Egyptian consulate in Vienna that some Nazis had assaulted some of its members, throwing beer steins and armchairs at them, injuring them, and that “oddly enough” the police had not arrested the perpetrators, but the Egyptians.[27] The Nazis attackers were later acquitted; one of its officers, penciled the word “Jude" [Jew] after the names of three of the attacked Egyptians. In February 1934, the Egyptian Embassy in Berlin complained to the Reich Ministry of the Interior that a student had been attacked and insulted in a dance hall in Tübingen. The perpetrator had complained that he was not permitted to dance with a “German” because he was “black” and of a “lower race” and had punched him. The attacker was not punished.
The Moroccan Mohamed Bouayad was killed in a gas chamber in Mauthausen in April 1945.
While Arabs were a small population in Europe at the time, they were not free from Nazi persecution.[28] Racist incidents against Egyptians were reported as early as the 1930s.[29][30] The Nazis also sterilized hundreds of "half-breeds", Germans of mixed Arab/North African heritage.[31] On the onset of war, Egyptians living in Germany were interned in response to the internment of Germans in Egypt.[32] Tens of thousands of French colonial soldiers were imprisoned after fighting alongside French forces in the Battle of France.[33]"
As you can see from the above, Nazis treated Arabs as bad as they treated Jews during that time because they didn't care about the difference between Arab and Jewish peoples.
This is completely false.
First of all, antisemitism has always been exclusively about hatred against Jews. It does not mean anything else and never has, regardless of the fact that there are other Semitic people.
Secondly, there was a systematic campaign of extermination against Jews and the hatred of Jews is a core part of Nazi ideology. There was none against Arabs, despite the fact that other minorities, including some Arabs, were also persecuted and killed when convenient. Nazis were extremely racist against lots of people, but this does not compare to their hatred of Jews.
Even in your example, the Egyptians were attacked by random Nazis, because they thought they were Jews.
First they called the antifascists "fascist."
Then they called the anti-racists "racist."
Now they are using "Antisemitism!" as a pretext to make laws enforcing antisemitism.
I don't even think old' Goebbels would be able to make head or tails out of this.
No finer propaganda machine then the one the US runs.
But... Israelis use that phrase...
I'm lost at how lost or government buffoons have become.
Imo it's antisemitic when used by pro-palestinian protestors and anti-arab when used by pro-Israelis.
Insinuating either of the groups, or any other group, should be purged from the region is inherently pro-genocide, doesn't matter which side is saying it.
Netanyahu Says ‘From the River to the Sea,’ a Phrase Zionists Claim is Genocidal
Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the notion of Palestinian statehood in a news conference on Thursday, claiming it “would endanger the state of Israel.” But he also invoked geographical language that has become a point of bitter contention as Israel’s continued military bombardment of Gaza continues in response to the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, saying that “in the future, the state of Israel has to control the entire area from the river to the sea,” according to an English translation of the speech from Israeli news channel i24News.
It's extremist rhetoric. This is true when antisemites say it and its true when Bibi says it.
Can we still say “from the river to the see deez nutz” as a joke? Or is Congress gonna get on our case about it?
I apologize if that joke went too far but thankfully, you’re never too far away to see deez nutz.
Sorry again.
Crazy that we are talking about an areas maybe 1/4 of the size of Chicago, when talking about Gaza. There are like only 6 land exists, 1 through Egypt and the rest through Israel.
Gaza is almost the same size as Manhattan. Not even NYC, just Manhattan.