
Rochelle Wilner President	Frank Dimant Chief Executive Officer	Ruth Klein National Director	Prof. Stephen Scheinberg National Chair

ANTISEMITISM IS ANTI-JEWISH !*

It’s time to end word games and combat racism

Adapted from 1992 article by Lorne Shipman, former Ontario Director, and Dr. Karen Mock, National Director, League for Human Rights of B’nai Brith Canada, August 24, 2001.

There is a movement afoot to claim that the term "antisemitism" applies to both Arabs and Jews. The proponents point to definitions of the term "Semite" as their evidence. However, it is important to examine the origins of the expression and its modern day context.

In 1879, William Marr published The Victory of Judaism over Germanism. This tract became the first anti-Jewish best seller Antijüdisher Verein. In Germany, during this period the term "Semite" was synonymous with Jew. Since there was no Arab population in Germany, the term clearly applied only to the Jewish population. Therefore, Marr renamed his organization Antisemitenligan and the term "antisemitism" was born.

Anti-Jewish groups in Hungary, Austria and France adopted the term. In 1883, three anti-Jewish weeklies emerged in France, two disappeared quickly but the one which remained was entitled L'Antisémitique. This publication contains no references to Arab stereotypes — only classic hatred against the Jews.

Since World War II and the Holocaust, the concept of antisemitism has taken on greater significance. The modern context is clear. When a person discusses the issue of antisemitism or if someone is accused of antisemitism the meaning is apparent — it is anti-Jewish discrimination that is being referred to.

However, the question remains that if anti-Arab sentiment is increasing, why can’t Arabs claim antisemitism for their own or share the term with Jews? The answer is clear. The term "Semite" refers to ‘race’ of people. Attacks against a ‘race’ already has a term — it is "racism."

In the employment equity field, although the term "Arab" is actually means a person whose origin stems from one of the Arab-speaking states, Arabs are included as part of the target groups for affirmative action because they are considered to be a "visible" minority (although in fact, it is possible to be white and Christian and be an Arab, just as it is possible to be Black or Chinese and be a Jew). Jews are not included in these target group definitions for a variety of reasons.

Attacks against the Jews come from two distinct sources. The first and foremost is religious in nature, and the second is cultural and/or racial. Therefore, the term racism is not considered to be wholly applicable, nor is the concept of religious intolerance.

A distinct term is needed to describe attacks against Jews. The accepted term in our modern context is "antisemitism." Any attempt to change that will only confuse the issue and is not helpful in overcoming the roots of the evil. The roots of hatred against Jews and Arabs are different because of the religious element to the attacks against the Jews and the geo-political element of the definition of Arab. A new term has been coined — Islamaphobia — to connote discrimination against Muslims on religious grounds.

Why then is there a campaign to change our understanding of the word "antisemitism"? Attacks against Muslims and Arabs have been increasing. This was most evident during and after the Gulf War. Since people understand the negative connotations ascribed to antisemitism, it may be that it is easier to sensitize the public by attaching your cause to that term rather than introducing a new concept to the public.

However, the actual effect is to confuse the terminology in an area that is already struggling to come to terms with definitions, and to undermine the fight by the Jewish community to defeat the traditional purveyors of antisemitism. This intrusion is not a healthy endeavor and undermines efforts to defeat the scourge of intolerance, prejudice and discrimination.

Antisemitism was invented to attack Jews. Since World War II that has become its accepted meaning. Changing the term only confuses the issue. It would be like saying that "feminism" was a theory to promote femininity or "sexism" in today’s context applies equally to both genders. Let’s stop playing with semantics and get down to combatting racism against Arabs and antisemitism against Jews once and for all.

*Antisemitism

For many years, scholars including Prof. Yehuda Bauer and Rabbi Emil Fackenheim, have advocated dropping the hyphen from the term anti-semitism, and in most academic writing, the new spelling has become the norm. The hyphen was put into the English translation of the original German and French terms but grammatically it was incorrect, implying that there is such a thing as semitism which it is against, or that it is equally applied to all Semites, neither of which is the case.

As Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin write in Why the Jews?: The Reasons for Antisemitism, (Simon Shuster, New York, 1983, p. 199) “in order to avoid any confusion we have adopted the approach that antisemitism be written as one word.” Emil Fackenheim, the Jewish philosopher, had also adopted this spelling, explaining the spelling ought to be antisemitism without the hyphen, dispelling the notion there is an entity Semitism which anti-Semitism opposes. (Emil Fackenheim, Post-Holocaust Anti-Jewishness, Jewish Identity and the Centrality of Israel in World Jewry and the State of Israel. ed. Moshe David, p. 11, n.2.)

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