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> The Truth About Anti-Semitism   Shahul Hameed   The Cambridge > Advanced Learner’s Dictionary defines anti-Semitism as, “The strong > dislike or cruel and unfair treatment of Jewish people.”  Perhaps, > we can take this definition as the commonly held opinion among most > Westerns.

Hey Shahul, "antisemitism" is an English word, so as an English word it means whatever English-language speakers say that it means. > The word Semite originally refers to a people who descended from > Shem, son of the Prophet Noah

Noah wasn’t any "prophet"!  In traditional Bible exegesis, the word "Semite" had a very vague and indefinite ethnic meaning (mostly referring to ancient peoples), while in modern linguistic usage it has a very precise and specific meaning referring to languages descended from postulated Proto-Semitic. > There is strong evidence to suggest that many present-day Jews, > particularly Ashkenazi Jews, are ethnically not Semitic, or only > fractionally Semitic.  The Arabs, be they Muslims or Christians, are > Semites.  If a Muslim is accused of anti-Semitism for his or her > criticism of Zionism, he or she should remind their accusers that > Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) was as purely Semitic as > is humanly possible, and there is none that we as Muslims revere and > love more than him. An Arab Muslim should simply say, "Hey, I’m > Semitic."

Hey Shahul, in modern usage "Semitic" is actually a technical linguistic term, which strictly-speaking applies only to purely linguistic matters — and is also found in the fixed expression "anti-Semitic", which is a 19th-century genteel and ultra-polite Victorian drawing-room euphemism for "Jew-hating" (invented in 1879 by the non-Jewish Jew-hater Wilhelm Marr, by the way); this word has always and only meant "Jew-hating".  Outside of these two contexts, "Semitic" basically has no meaning whatsoever, and should be completely avoided (in modern sound scientifically-accurate usage, the term "Semitic" is used to describe _languages_, but is never used to describe peoples or ethnic groups, unless perhaps in a strictly historical way to describe tribesmen of 1000 B.C.). If you’re trying to describe modern peoples as "Semites" and "non-Semites" on any basis other than a strictly linguistic one (i.e. what languages they speak), then you’re trying to resurrect an obsolete and outmoded kind of "racial science" which was pretty well discredited 50 years ago — in fact, the Nazis were the last prominent proponents of the type of "racial science" which claimed to be able to decide who was "racially" a "Semite".  In any case, Israelis who speak the Hebrew language speak a language which is every bit as "Semitic" as the Arabic language is. If you’re trying to weasel around and manipulate some kind of semantics in order to pretend that Arabs can’t hate Jews, then that’s utterly lamely feebly pathetically ludicrous.  If the word "anti-Semitic" clouds your vision (for some idiosyncratic personal reason), then just call yourself a "Jew-hater"; we won’t insist on the term "anti-Semitic", so that if you prefer to describe yourself as a "Jew-hater", rather than as an "anti-Semite", then that will be fine by us… > The Zionist propaganda machine uses anti-Semitism as a tool to > instantly dismiss and cast a cloud of incredibility over its > opponents. It is a clever ploy to counter all criticism of Israel’s > unjust policies.

Hey Shahul, if someone insists on holding Israel to higher standards than he does other countries, and so spends a great amount of time and effort singling out Israel for criticism (while appearing rather uninterested in more severe violations which have been committed by other countries), and yet this person is unable to come up with a convincing argument or reasoned explanation as to why he is singling out Israel, and holding it to especially high standards, then this naturally creates suspicions about this person’s motives… What many Israelis wonder, is why Israel is so often singled out from all the other countries of the world, and whether many people who single out Israel have any unbiased and objective basis for doing so. If you’re going to condemn countries which aren’t democracies, then you’d have to condemn every single Arab state without exception.  If you’re going to condemn countries which have committed human rights violations, then why aren’t you condemning Holland for facilitating the massacre at Srebenica, or Saudia Arabia, Sudan, and Indonesia for persecuting Christians?  If you’re condemning of countries which are occupying other countries, then why aren’t you condemning Syria for occupying Lebanon, or Morocco for occupying the Western Sahara, or China for occupying Tibet?  When it comes to massacres, Sabra and Shatila (where not a single Israeli was directly involved in any killing) is dwarfed to relative insignificance by the Syrian government’s savage and brutal massacres at Homs and Hama in the very same year of 1982: according to http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2000/06/20/fp1s3-csm.shtml , Assad’s brother Rifaat, who commanded the attack on Hama, "is reported to have once chided someone who suggested that 7,000 people died at Hama, by boasting that 38,000 had died"!  Please do tell us what reasoned and neutral argument you can come up with for singling out Israel alone. — Some Qur’an quotes:  5:20  qaala muusaa  5:21 "yaa qawmi