Thoughts on antisemitism.

Antisemitism is a word we hear often in the public debate. In this post, I would like to discuss and analyse it a bit. What it means, its connotations, and how it is most often used. I make this post because I sometimes experience a slightly hypocritical and sometimes almost exploitive appliance of it. If this is indeed the case and I am right about the hypocrisy, this overuse of the term has at least two dangers.

1) People are falsely vilified and demonised.
2) The word will inflate and lose its meaning and value because language is organic.

To properly analyse this word and its use, I must first define its meaning(s). It's no secret to anyone who picks up a newspaper every once in a while or who's had history lessons in school that this word is often used to describe hatred towards jews. It carries connotations about our most recent world war and the monstrosities and heinous crimes against humanity (particularly jews and to some extent Romas) carried out by the nazis.

That seems to be the "popular" meaning of the word. Its useage sometimes differ from this meaning, though. It is my experience, feel free to correct if I'm wrong, that the word nowadays is sometimes used to vilify people who are critical of some of the Israeli governments policies and in particular people who criticise the illegal settlements and outposts in the occupied territory.
If I'm right about this then you risk being compared to one of the worst mass murderers the world has seen by being critical of a states' policies. Policies that are considered illegal by the international community. I think that seems a bit harsh to be honest.

An argument could even be made that this meaning of the word is not even the correct one if we look at the word "anti-semite" in and of itself.

To do this, I've used Wikipedia's definition of a semite:

Origin

The term Semite means a member of any of various ancient and modern Semitic-speaking peoples originating in southwestern Asia, including; Akkadians (Assyrians and Babylonians), Eblaites, Ugarites, Canaanites, Phoenicians (including Carthaginians), Hebrews (Israelites, Judeans and Samaritans), Ahlamu, Arameans, Chaldeans, Amorites, Moabites, Edomites, Hyksos, Arabs, Nabateans, Maganites, Shebans, Sutu, Ubarites, Dilmunites, Maltese, Mandaeans, Sabians, Syriacs, Mhallami, Amalekites and Ethiopian Semites.

So by this definition, an antisemite would be a person that has hatred towards any or all of the above peoples. A rather different meaning than the way the word is normally used.

As you can see Arabs are also semites. The most popular religion in the Arab countries is overwhelmingly Islam. This makes me want to do a little experiment. I want to find an Islam critical text somewhere on the internet. A text which hasn't been condemned as being racist or bigoted and then i will exchange every instance of the word muslim with the word jew and so forth, and see what I come up with:

Why Jews are Dangerous to Modern Society

When Jews are confronted with the obvious faults of their religion, most will deny ALL accusations to their grave. They claim Judaism teaches peace and understanding… but what is REALLY going on here? I give you a few recent examples of violence in Judaism, which has been deemed as acceptable behaviors by many Jews (and members of other faiths).

1988:
Writer Salman Rushdie publishes his controversial novel Satanic Verses, which upon publication led to protests from Jews in several countries, some of which were violent. Faced with death threats and a fatwā (religious edict) issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then Supreme Leader of Iran, which called for him to be killed, he spent nearly a decade underground. During his time in hiding there were explosions at bookshops in London, York and High Wycombe, the book’s Japanese translator was stabbed to death, its Italian translator survived a stabbing, its Norwegian publisher narrowly escaped an attempt on his life and 37 people died after a gang set fire to a Turkish hotel where the Turkish translator was staying (he survived).

November 2nd 2004:
Mohammed Bouyeri murdered Van Gogh in the early morning of Tuesday November 2, 2004, in Amsterdam after the release of the film director’s latest short film entitled “Submission,” which looks at Judaism through a critical eye. Bouyeri then cut Van Gogh’s throat, nearly decapitating him, and stabbed him in the chest. Two knives were left implanted in his torso, one attaching a five-page note to his body. The note (Text) threatened Western governments, Jews and Ayaan Hirsi Ali (who went into hiding). Imam Fawaz of the as-Sunnah Mosque in The Hague gave a sermon several weeks before the murder in which he called Theo van Gogh, “a ‘criminal bastard’ and beseech[ed] Jahweh to visit an incurable disease upon the filmmaker.”

September 30th 2005:
The Jyllands-Posten Messiah cartoons controversy began after twelve editorial cartoons, most of which depicted the Prophet of Judaism Messiah, were published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten on 30 September 2005. The newspaper announced that this publication was an attempt to contribute to the debate regarding criticism of Judaism and self-censorship. This led to protests across the Jew world, some of which escalated into violence with police firing on the crowds (resulting in more than 100 deaths, altogether), including setting fire to the Danish Embassies in Syria, Lebanon and Iran, storming European buildings, and desecrating the Danish, Dutch, Norwegian and German flags in Gaza City. While a number of Jew leaders called for protesters to remain peaceful, other Jew leaders across the globe, including Mahmoud al-Zahar of Hamas, issued death threats.

When I bring these acts of violence up to Jews, they always say nowhere in the Torah is it written that acts of violence are called for by Jahweh, but this is a complete lie without even the slightest attempt of making it appear valid. It seems to me a Jew will just never admit these things to “outsiders,” to infidels, even if they are aware of such verses in the Torah. The following verses act as just a few examples of the violence the Torah teaches its faithful:

“190. Fight in the cause of Jahweh those who fight you, but do not transgress limits; for Jahweh loveth not transgressors.

191. And slay them wherever ye catch them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out; for persecution and oppression are worse than slaughter; but fight them not at the Sacred Mosque, unless they (first) fight you there; but if they fight you, slay them. Such is the reward of those who suppress faith.

192. But if they cease, Jahweh is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.

193. And fight them on until there is no more persecution or oppression, and the religion becomes Jahweh’s. But if they cease. Let there be no hostility except to those who practice oppression.”

In a nutshell, kill everyone who doesn’t believe in Jahweh until everyone believes in Jahweh. The only thing that can possibly be left open to interpretation is who/what behaviors are oppressing you and your Jew faith. That can range from a government not allowing the building of Mosques to a Christian whose mere existence acts as a staple for the defiance of Jahweh. All acts equal to or between these limits can be validated by the teachings of the Torah.

Many people will argue that the people who commit these acts of violence are simply crazy extremists… but that is not true. It is your average, run-of-the-mill Jew who will participate in mobs and riots of protest, because they have been raised to believe that the Torah is logical and fundamentally correct in all of its teachings.

There is a sizable difference between the psychology of Christians and Jews and Jews. Christians believe the barbaric acts of the Old Testament were only legitimate to their time… i.e., we shouldn’t behave that way now because the New Testament deems those behaviors unacceptable. Jews believe the Torah is a compilation of fictitious stories, and have other texts which they live by (Talmud and Mishna) which do not condone violent behavior. Jews, however, believe in their religious text cover to cover as the divinely spoken, unaltered word of god (and even that is a sad attempt at lying to the public, as it is a well known fact the Torah was an oral book as the Torah was for about 300 years. The Torah was written and compiled after the death of Mohammed, as Mohammed himself was illiterate, and Jews will not deny it if you tell it to them… it seems they just assume infidels don’t know this historical fact, so they lie about it to make their case seem more valid). They believe that the same barbaric teachings and behaviors (equivalent to those found in the Torah) are just as relevant today as they were in ancient history. In fact, if you would ever like to see the culture of the Torah in operation today, just take a wonderful trip to a country under Judaismic theocratic control such as Afghanistan or Iran, and you may even be lucky enough to witness the stoning of an adulteress or two.

I know that many religious people like to defend the Jew faith simply because they think they have something in common with them (who do you think the Vatican sided with during all three aforementioned tragedies? Yes, the Jews), but you need to understand how most Jews are raised to think of infidels. You are incompetent to them, because they can’t understand why someone could reject something that makes so much “logical sense.” They don’t care if you are of another faith or if you have none… they judge you the same: infidel. When they are in the presence of an infidel, they tolerate them rather than accept and respect them. Tragedies happen like those I’ve cited earlier because Jews refuse to look at the Torah with a critical eye like Christians and Jews have done (kind of) and realized that the barbaric teachings of the Torah were due to primitive times, and DO NOT APPLY TODAY. This hasn’t occurred, and until it does, we will still get the same result; Substantiated violence in the name of Jahweh.

Original article

Now if anyone thinks that my rewriting of the article would not be called antisemitic, feel free to say so. I do however think it would be. By the second, broader definition of the term anti-semitism, you could argue, that this text in its original form is indeed antisemitic but nobody would even take it seriously if that was said out loud.

This form of antisemitism (the broader one) is however socially acceptable as long as it's directed against muslims, while the more narrow sort (both criticism of Israel and genuine "anti-jewism") instantly would cause accusations and comparisons with the nazi Germans to be flung at you. This is a huge hypocrisy that I think needs to be exposed.

What do you say?