It is irrational slander for the anti-Semite label to be recklessly thrown about for disparaging Zionism, Israel, or Judaism since “Semites” are a racial category first constructed in the 18th century of people whose ancestors lived in regions that spoke “Semitic” languages, including Aramaic, Hebrew, and Arabic. Discussions about the history of “anti-Semitism” today tend to be anachronistic in the sense that they suggest that “anti-Semitism” can be observed in the disparagement of Jews and Judaism that goes back thousands of years. A prime example is the common irrational victimhood Olympics description of anti-Semitism as “the world’s oldest hatred”.
Humans have been hating each other, as individuals and part of a collective, for all sorts of reasons far before Jews even existed. Ancient Israel itself was mythologically formed, according to the Tanakh, through a genocidal hatred of various people of Canaan.
Furthermore, the use of the term “anti-Semitic” only came into existence in the 19th century, and early included a reference to all “Semites”, not just “Semitic Jews.” The earliest usage of “anti-Semitic” seems to be found in a 1860 criticism by Moritz Steinschneider of Ernest Renan’s article "New considerations on the general character of the Semitic peoples, and in particular on their tendency towards monotheism." Steinschneider criticized Renan’s “anti-Semitic prejudices” in regard to Renan’s analysis of the religions that came from Semitic people, including Islam and Judaism. Only after the term was adopted by German ethno-nationalists who used it specifically toward Jews in general, did it become popularly associated only with hatred toward Jews based on a conceived Jewish race. “Anti-Semitism” is in fact one of the world’s youngest hatreds.
The history of “anti-Semitism” is intimately tied to the erroneous belief that Jews are a race. Due to imagined racial characteristics of a Jewish race, German ethno-nationalists, such as Wilhelm Marr, argued that Jews wouldn’t be able to assimilate into German society even if they did renounce Judaism, as religion wasn’t his issue.
I may have erred. It might be that Semitism and Germanism will enter a political social peace. I just don’t believe in such a peace. I only believe what I see: our social, political subjugation by you. But instead of boastfully rattling the chains as is done by many, I admit that we have been fettered “hand and foot”, “heart and soul” --- from palace to hovel.
We can count him as the originator of the terms “anti-Semite” and “Semitism” and identified himself as an anti-Semite. His hostility to Jews wasn’t simply due to his dislike of their religion, it was due to his bigotry about their imaginary “Semitic” racial characteristics— aka “Semitism”. Before the 18th century, there was less of a racial tinge to hostility toward Jews. It was commonly driven by religious and cultural hostility, which could often be relieved if a Jew converted. Some of the Palestinians being starved in Gaza by Likud are probably descendants of “Semitic” people who converted to Islam or Christianity from Judaism. The anti-Semites of the 19th and 20th century thought Jews could not convert though because they didn’t recognize Jews as a religious group, but a race. That erroneous notion was explicitly expressed by Adolph Hitler in Mein Kampf:
From time immemorial, however, the Jews have known better than any others how falsehood and calumny can be exploited. Is not their very existence founded on one great lie, namely, that they are a religious community, where as in reality they are a race?
Zionist organizations, like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), like to disparage people for believing what they label “anti-Semitic tropes”. The list of beliefs the ADL finds unacceptable and racist includes things like “Jews have too much control and influence on Wall Street” and “Jews in business go out of their way to hire other Jews”; but what it doesn’t include is “Jews are a race or ethnic group.” It probably doesn’t include that “trope”, which was a belief shared by Nazis that contributed to genocide of Jews and non-Jews, because the ADL itself expresses that trope. Jews are not a race, but here is Jonathan Greenblatt, the director of the ADL, calling Jews an ethnic group.
Let's be clear that the Jews, again, are complicated. And a lot of this doesn't fit neatly into the boxes that we use today to think about difference. Yes, they are a religion. They are also an ethnic group.
And here we see the ADL defining racism as connected with “ethnicity”:
Racism occurs when individuals or institutions show more favorable evaluation or treatment of an individual or group based on race or ethnicity.
Often people try to use “ethnicity” as a way to smuggle in race without actually using the word race. “Ethnic pride” became a way for racial tribalists to be proud of their race while using a slightly different rhetoric that is less taboo. Ironically, even by the definition of racism by the ADL itself and Jonathan Greenblatt’s [mis]conception of Jews as an ethnicity, the state of Israel is racist because it gives favorable treatment to Jews.
A lot of Muslims and Jews share common biological ancestry, especially Arab Muslims in Palestine and Mizrahi Jews—aka Arab / Middle Eastern Jews. And many Ashkenazi Jews—aka European Jews—could be genetically closer to any random Italian Christian than any random Mizrahi Jew.
Our results, primarily from the detailed analysis of the four major haplogroup K and N1b founders, but corroborated with the remaining Ashkenazi mtDNAs, suggest that most Ashkenazi maternal lineages trace their ancestry to prehistoric Europe… Overall, it seems that at least 80% of Ashkenazi maternal ancestry is due to the assimilation of mtDNAs indigenous to Europe, most likely through conversion.
It makes no rational sense to classify Jews as a race anymore than it makes sense to classify Christians as race. The same goes for “ethnicity”; it makes no more sense to call Jews an ethnic group than it is to call Christians an ethnic group. That “trope” was a pillar of Nazi ideology; and it is a pillar of modern Zionism. It doesn’t matter that many Jewish groups have been relatively more endogamous than some other religious groups; there has nonetheless been a substantial amount of conversion and intermating among Jews and non-Jews. And a religion doesn’t magically become a race based on the percent of its population that shares ancestry anyway. Zionists have been trying to locate the “Jewish gene” for decades now, engaging in pseudo-scientific race research. Bringing up “science” that shows some of the Jewish population shares ancestral biological descent is logically irrelevant. No one can convert to a race. Religion is a separate empirical and logical category from race, just as gender is.
Most Europeans were Christians for over a thousand years, but there is no big confusion about a “Christian European” race, except maybe within the Klan. The vast majority of Klan people are European, it doesn’t follow that a person born into family belonging to the Klan are part of the Klan race, nor would that change if they added to their doctrine that anyone with a mother in the Klan is automatically a member of the Klan. Nor would that doctrine prevent anyone from leaving the Klan if they wanted to. The Klan could be around for a million years and it still wouldn’t be a race; it would still just be the Klan, a cult. Ancestry does not dictate our religious tribes. Choice does. Any tribe that claims to have authority over an individual’s religious identity based on ancestry and demands loyalty based on ancestry is spiritually despotic.
I did a genetic ancestry test through Ancestry.com. Here it is:
According to Ancestry.com, about 55% of my ancestry can be traced to Europe / England / Russia, which for the past 1000 years has been mostly Christian. My parents were also both raised Christian. But I am not Christian. And it’s not complicated like Jonathan Greenblatt wants people to believe. I have no Christian “component”; or “part”. I am 0% Christian. I am not Christian, period, regardless of what religion my European ancestors practiced. Nor do I belong to whatever religion(s) that my ancestors in various regions of Africa practiced. My religion has nothing to do with my biological ancestry—aka my “race”. Hence, the only "racial component” that many Jews share is the erroneous religious ideas that Jews are a race or their religious identity is irrevocably established at birth by what religion some of their ancestors expressed fealty to. No one’s religion has anything to do with race, except by choice. And what my racial ancestry is or what my ancestors’ religions were should have no bearing on my right to conquer or rule a territory. Many Jewish Zionists disagree though and seem to think that because some of their distant ancestors might have lived in Palestine observing the Torah (we will find some do not have any such ancestors) they, and their “people”, have the right to rule Palestine, their “homeland.”
Additionally, the fact that 50% of my “ancestry” can be traced to modern day England or Cameroon doesn’t make me “British” or “Cameroon”. Those designations mostly refer to modern DNA sample reference populations and the modern political boundaries where they come from; while some of my ancestors may have been British citizens or members of a society in Cameroon, I am not. I am only a U.S. citizen, and I was born in North America. While it’s quite plausible that some of my ancestors were Roman citizens, or living in the Roman Republic or Empire, it doesn’t follow that I am personally “Roman”. I could certainly make the decision to identify as Roman and ally myself with the “diaspora of Romans”, but that would be quite the metaphysical, religious, and tribal choice.
To slander people for disparaging Judaism or Zionism (both religions / ideologies) as supposedly promoting “anti-Semitism” (the erroneous and degenerate ideology that Jews are a race of Semites sharing nefarious racial characteristics) when a significant portion of Muslims and Christians and none-of-the-above (like Zoroastrians) have Semitic ancestry, is actually something that can be reasonably classified as “anti-Semitic” (racism toward Semites), as it assumes that only Jews have “Semitic” ancestry or only people with Semitic ancestry are Jews; it assumes Muslims with Semitic ancestry or Jews with Caucasian or Asian ancestry don’t exist. And it assumes all Jews have Semitic ancestry, which they do not. I’m quite confident Sammy Davis Jr didn’t.
Which is why it is also slanderous to call someone anti-Semitic simply because they say something disparaging about an individual Jew: not all Jews have “Semitic” racial ancestry, nor is disparagement always necessarily related to racial animosity toward an imagined Jewish race. For example, arbitrary disparagement of Jewish billionaires and their influence on politics like George Soros or Sheldon Adelson (two Jews with actually substantially different political views) is often labeled anti-Semitic. There are plenty of plausible reasons people may dislike Soros or Adelson outside of what some people imagine their racial ancestry to be. Bill Gates and the Koch brothers are billionaires deeply involved in politics, lots of people don’t like them, but they are not Jewish. I have yet to hear anyone be accused of racism for disparaging Bill Gates. Just because some of Soros detractors are racist doesn’t mean all are, and to simply assume they are is slanderous. Albeit, of course, as a method of deterring people from disparaging a politically powerful Jew, it is probably effective.
I think clinging to a delusional notion of Jews and Semites created by 19th and early 20th century German ethno-nationalists, such as Nazis, is not a rational or ethical position. As it is now, the concept of anti-Semitism as promoted by Zionist organizations, the U.S. Government, Israel, and the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, is being weaponized to suppress opposition to a genocide by Israel against Gazans, many of whom are themselves “Semites”. Their definition of “anti-Semitism” is itself anti-Semitic.
A specific example of supposed “anti-Semitism” by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance that is being weaponized to maintain an apartheid and carry out genocide:
Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
The idea that every “people” has a right to rule a state (“self-determination”) is just nonsense. Nazis were a people. Scientologists are a people. Any religious or ideological group is a “people”; and if you throw in every conceivable ethnic group as well, it only compounds the nonsense. None of these “people” have an essential natural right to rule territory regardless of how they govern. First of all, there simply isn’t enough land on this planet to satisfy the desires of all the “people”. Does anyone’s “people” have a right to racially cleanse any territory they wish? And would it be racist to suggest they were in fact racist if they racially cleansed a territory and established laws that conceptualized their “people” as a race (even if they weren’t) and privileged them? No, it would be accurate.
The American Revolution was fueled by the notion that any “people” has the right to revolution if the state (government) the people live under is sufficiently unjust. Any government, such as the current [state] government of Israel, or the United States government today, has no inherent right to exist. From the words of the U.S. Declaration of Independence:
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Zionists have the hubris to tell Americans that it is racist to argue that the government of Israel should be abolished, when the U.S. government was established through a revolution. Was the American revolution driven by racism toward Englishmen? Dumb.
Just as the existence of a “Christian State”, “Muslim State”, or “Buddhist State”, is unjust, so is a “Jewish State”. I don’t like such theocratic states, and feel people should have a right to alter them, and if any of those states, like any state, becomes despotic, people should have the right to abolish it. And them doing so is absolutely not racist. To suggest otherwise is idiotic slander. Israel isn’t holy; and right now it is a genocidal pseudo ethno-theocratic state. The U.S. isn’t holy; and right now the government is enabling Israel’s genocidal behaviors. Furthermore, suggesting that a revolution against a government would be just does not imply that murdering every civilian of that government is the intended end, which is an insane and detestable assumption.
Suggesting that a revolution against Britain would be just during the American revolution didn’t imply a desire to kill every British citizen (or subject), which Americans themselves were at the time. Simply suggesting that it would be just to alter or abolish the North Korean government today doesn’t imply racism or genocidal intent. Suggesting that it would have been just for anti-Nazi Germans to alter or abolish the government of Nazi Germany immediately prior to or during World War 2 would have of course not been racist. The same applies to Israel today: suggesting that it would be just to alter or abolish the Israeli government to end the Palestinian apartheid and genocide would not imply a desire to kill every Israeli citizen — Israeli citizens could even propose it themselves. Theoretically, it could even be done without any violence, such as what happened with the South Korean June Democratic Struggle.
But as I wrote earlier with the example of Nat Turner, not simply any revolutionary group will be just even if a revolution, in theory, would be just given the political situation of a society. A government established by Hamas that ruled all of Palestine could be no more just than the current government of Israel and possibly even worse. But a revolution by virtuous Palestinians (or Israelis) who aspired for a virtuous government would be righteous. And of course, because a government by Hamas would be unjust doesn’t justify a genocide against Palestinians or an apartheid anymore than the fact that the government of Israel being unjust justifies a genocide against Israelis or an apartheid. It is anti-Semitic to suggest that Palestinian infants are justified to be massacred by Likud because of what Hamas has done or is. And when it comes to the relationship of the U.S. toward Israel and Palestine — the U.S. government does not need to financially or militarily support either Hamas or Likud.
Perversely, the “remembrance of the Holocaust”, and the horror that was inflicted upon millions of people during World War 2, is being used as a way to try to imprison peoples’ minds— a mental vice that can create fear and guilt about blaming Israel, the self-declared “Jewish State,” of genocide, the crime millions of its own people or their immediate ancestors were victims of themselves. But it is the state of Israel, and those who enable it’s atrocities (such as most of the U.S. Congress) that corrupts the memory of the horrors of World War 2 by perpetuating similar horrors, not the people who hold the state of Israel responsible for what it has done and what it is doing to Palestinians. Zionists are using the memory of the genocide of European Jews by the Nazis as a psychological weapon to emotionally manipulate people, arguably even at times themselves, into accepting a racial cleansing, an apartheid, and a genocide of Palestinians. That is an abomination.
Zionists sometimes claim that “anti-Semitism” is some sort of evolving metaphysical amoeba that constantly changes — when in fact it is Zionists who have tried to change the meaning of anti-Semitism to slander people for challenging whatever some politically powerful Zionist organization thinks is in the interest of Israel and Zionism. People should not cede the meaning of anti-Semitism to a cult; we can include both Jewish and Christian Zionists at the helm. Especially a cult that is currently carrying out a genocide under the delusional pretext that they have a right to starve millions of “Semitic” people to protect a government established through racial cleansing and maintained through an apartheid.