Semites...

[SummerSnow]

A Semite is a member of any of various ancient and modern Semitic-speaking peoples, mostly originating in the Near East, including: Akkadians (Assyrians and Babylonians), Ammonites, Amorites, Arameans, Chaldeans, Canaanites (including Hebrews/Israelites/Jews/Samaritans and Phoenicians/Carthaginians), Eblaites, Dilmunites, Edomites, Amalekites, Turukku, Ethiopian Semites, Hyksos, Arabs, Nabateans, Maltese, Mandaeans, Mhallami, Moabites, Shebans, Meluhhans, Maganites, Ubarites, Sabians and Ugarites.....http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic_people


So, Arabs are Semetic people and hatred of Arabs is anti-semetic too.


had this argument with someone who hated Arabs many who are Muslims and they were in shock and in denial oh and of course angry.

[elleng]

1. Ignorance prevails.

[Iggo]

3. Shh!

[still_one]

4. Except in modern connotation in the U.s. It means anti-Jewish

[tammywammy]

5. Since you're using Wiki....

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism

Antisemitism (also spelled Anti-Semitism or anti-semitism) is prejudice against, hatred of, or discrimination against Jews as a national, ethnic, religious or racial group.[1][2] A person who holds such positions is called an "antisemite". As Jews are an ethnoreligious group, antisemitism is generally considered a form of racism.[3]

While the conjunction of the units anti, Semite and ism indicates antisemitism as being directed against all Semitic people, the term was popularized in Germany in 1873 as a scientific-sounding term for Judenhass ("Jew-hatred&quot ,[4] although it had been used for at least two decades prior,[5] and that has been its normal use since then.[6] For the purposes of a 2005 U.S. governmental report, antisemitism was considered "hatred toward Jews—individually and as a group—that can be attributed to the Jewish religion and/or ethnicity."[7]

Antisemitism may be manifested in many ways, ranging from expressions of hatred of or discrimination against individual Jews to organized violent attacks by mobs, state police, or even military attacks on entire Jewish communities. Although the term did not come into common usage until the 19th century, it is now also applied to historic anti-Jewish incidents. Notable instances of persecution include the pogroms which preceded the First Crusade in 1096, the expulsion from England in 1290, the massacres of Spanish Jews in 1391, the persecutions of the Spanish Inquisition, the expulsion from Spain in 1492, Cossack massacres in Ukraine of 1648–1657, various pogroms in Imperial Russia between 1821 and 1906, the 1894–1906 Dreyfus affair in France, the Holocaust in German-occupied Europe, official Soviet anti-Jewish policies and Arab and Muslim involvement in the Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries.


And here's dictionary.com

Anti-Semitism
1. Discrimination against or prejudice or hostility toward Jews.


Others can be Semites, but anti-Semiticism is specifically about hatred of Jewish people.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

6. Since the letter v is shaped like a wedge, it must be in cuneiform.

You can't always deduce the meaning of English words from their etymology.

Anti-semitism means hatred of Jews specifically, not of semitic people in general.

[SummerSnow]

7. But why isn't it used toward any other Semitic people?

[tammywammy]

8. Bc the word is a misnomer.

From the wiki link provided in post #5:

Despite the use of the prefix anti-, the term "anti-Semitic" is not a direct opposite of "Semitic" which linguistically makes the term a misnomer. Within common, day to day usage, however, the terms "anti-Semitism" and "antisemitism" have accepted and specific use to describe prejudice against Jews alone and in general.[1][6] This is despite the fact that there are other speakers of Semitic languages (e.g. Arabs, Ethiopians, or Assyrians) and that not all Jews speak a Semitic language.

******

Historically the phrase has never meant all Semitic people, it specifically meant/means Jews. Twisting it to mean all Semitic people does not reflect well on the person trying to do so.

[foo_bar]

9. it's a bit like the word "Caucasian"

German wordsmiths coined these terms centuries ago, and the names stuck in spite of a more nuanced understanding of ethnic/sociolinguistic boundaries:

Meiners' treatise was widely read in the German intellectual circles of its day, despite muted criticism of its scholarship. Meiners proposed a taxonomy of human beings which involved only two races (Rassen): Caucasians and Mongolians. He considered Caucasians to be more physically attractive than Mongolians, notably because they had paler skin; Caucasians were also more sensitive and more morally virtuous than Mongolians. Later he would make similar distinctions within the Caucasian group, concluding that the Germans were the most attractive and virtuous people on earth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_race

Marr and others employed the word antisemitism in the largely secular anti-Jewish political campaigns that became widespread in Europe around the turn of the century. The word derived from an 18th-century analysis of languages that differentiated between those with so-called “Aryan” roots and those with so-called “Semitic” ones. This distinction led, in turn, to the assumption--a false one--that there were corresponding racial groups. Within this framework, Jews became “Semites,” and that designation paved the way for Marr’s new vocabulary. He could have used the conventional German term Judenhass to refer to his hatred of Jews, but that way of speaking carried religious connotations that Marr wanted to de-emphasize in favor of racial ones. Apparently more “scientific,” Marr’s Antisemitismus caught on. Eventually, it became a way of speaking about all the forms of hostility toward Jews throughout history.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/WilhelmMarr.html

The word "anti-semitism" might be anti-semitic in this sense (or anti-Jewish rather, by relegating Judaism to a "scientific" label like a congenital disorder), but it's hard to find a polite term for this sort of thing (Judaphobia?)

[Igel]

14. Because it isn't.

The idea that a word means what its etymology says is a fallacy.

Words can change meanings. Words can have idiosyncratic meanings.

Words obtain their meaning from the community that they're used in. "Anti-semitic" has never meant merely "being opposed to Semites." It was coined to indicate antipathy towards Jews, and that's where it's meaning has stayed.

One day it might change it's meaning to include "anti-Arabist", but at that point presumably the usage will also change to reflect the change in meaning. Rather than having somebody try to foist a new meaning on current usage to invert the content of the discourse.

[NuclearDem]

10. Nope.

Words have meanings and historical context and should be used with these in mind.

[Nye Bevan]

11. The "Semites don't always mean Jews" trope is, itself, anti-Semitic,

meaning (of course) anti-Jewish.

[2banon]

12. I don't understand why people ever hated "Jews". And I don't understand how or why this

brand of bigotry is any worse than any other forms of bigotry, and i don't understand why progressives allow themselves to be a door mat for anti-progressive, anti-liberal - pro-neo-conservative foreign policy matters in order to "prove" their loyalty to Israel.

If one disagrees with horrific Israeli policy and criticizes our government for supporting horrific human rights violations by the Israeli state, then one is automatically accused and labeled an "anti-semite".

That's the most bizarre, intellectually dishonest rationalization ever.

It's amazing that it has so much traction and given so much credibility.

But that's the state of our intellectual capacity here in the good ole U.S.A.

simply pathetic.

[still_one]

16. Because they accused them of killing Jesus, and never accepted Jesus as god

[Codeine]

13. Except that isn't what the word means. nt

[GummyBearz]

15. So you lost a simple debate with a racist

because you don't understand the relevant, modern day, connotation of a word can be different than the sum of its root-words.

My only question is why did you make a post about the epic fail ?