recently i’ve been hearing a lot of what boils down to “if you support the palestinians right to exist, you are anti-semitic”…

which REALLY puzzles me…

because…

originally, the term “semitic people” INCLUDED “arabs, jews, akkadians, and phoenicians”… the term “semitic” comes from the biblical sons of noah; ham, shem, and japheth. it has only been comparatively recently (i.e. around 1930-ish) that the term “anti-semitic” has come to mean “hatred of jews” in particular…

as an aside, originally “semitic” people were from what we now call “asia”, “hamite” people were from what we now call “africa”, and “japhethite” people were from what we now call “europe”… which brings up a whole different miasma of biblical nonsense concerning “japhethite supremacy” which i am not addressing, primarily because it is biblical nonsense. 😒

does use of the term “anti-semitic” in this way mean it is expected that people will intuitively understand that what you are REALLY saying is that it is OKAY to hate arabs?

or do the people who use the term “anti-semitic” to mean “hatred of jews” really not know that the term originally included arabs as well? considering the state of education these days, it wouldn’t surprise me that much. the only reason I know this is because i looked it up when i was in my teens… i certainly wasn’t taught that the term “anti-semitic” meant anything other than “hatred of jews”…

for that matter, apart from language (which is similar enough already, apart from the orthography), and culture/religion, what really IS the difference between a middle-eastern jew and a middle-eastern arab? if you removed all visible cultural markers (i.e. primarily “clothing”), and had them stand side by side, could you REALLY tell the difference?

it is questions like this that inevitably make me wonder about the possibility that i am some species other than human… 😒