Semitic semantics
By Bert Hetebry
Where did the term ‘Semitic’ come from and what did it mean?
Look closely and see how mythology defines people in a very real way, marking their difference, no matter how small, as different, a means of judging, marginalising or inclusion, allowing for life or death over a definition of unprovable origin.
The Biblical story of Noah’s Flood is one of the destruction and rebuilding of the descendants of Adam and Eve, the first humans, created in God’s image.
Just a brief overview. the descendants of Adam and Eve proliferated, and the man ones saw that the woman ones were beautiful. So they married them, that is, engaged in sexual pleasure seeking with them, because no man can resist a beautiful woman, oh that women were born ugly so not able to tempt weak willed men!
And the Nephilim saw all the fun that was being had and joined in… and who were the Nephilim? Ah mythology is so much fun, it seems that the Nephilim were evil people, fallen people, perhaps even fallen angels jealous of God’s newest creation, humans. They do appear time and again in the Old Testament as the source of sin and alienation from God, a testament to the people of God to remain faithful or death and destruction is bound to follow.
Anyway, let’s continue with Noah, the flood and its aftermath. That mythology is a bit easier to follow.
So God was displeased with what he saw was happening, people were having way too much fun and too busy to recognise all the good things He had done for them, so he decided that everyone had to go, kill them all, drown them and everything else He had earlier said was so good. But He changed His mind because there was one family that was still faithful to Him and they would be saved, start over, a small family and a breeding pair of all the animals would rebuild that which God was about to destroy.
Noah and his three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, warned of the coming deluge dutifully built an ark, herded the animals on board and together with their wives survived the forty days and nights of the worst rain storm imaginable, even worse than the flooding due to climate change we are witnessing today, such a deluge that it took a hundred days for the waters to receded and a new land to emerge from the waters.
As it is when we put men and women together, or even males and females of any species, somehow, they breed and the descendants of Noah and his sons and their wives did just that so prolifically that they formed the foundation of three distinct ‘nation’ groups, Semites, Hamites and Japhetites which spread out across what we now call the Middle East. I know, the world is a little larger than the Middle East, but mythology is not always (or is that ever) logical.
Anyway, lots of different family group grew side by side over time and did not always get along too well with each other and through the various groupings we end up with Abraham who was originally called Abram leave the Mesopotamian city of Ur with his wife and a few servants on camels which were not known to be used for domesticated for another 600 or so years, to wend his way to what today is known as Israel, or Palestine. The people of Mesopotamia were descendants of Shem, and that language group became known as Semites. The people who Abraham, yes he was Abraham by that time, he had had a bit of a fight with God, finished off with a limp an new expanded version of his name and a newfound virility in his old age, to finally sire two sons, one with his wife and the other with his wife’s maid servant, were also descendants of Shem, also Semites, but from various of Shem’s sons, and so were a kind of substrata of Semites.
Phew.
We need to move on a bit through both history and unfolding mythologies to finally get to where this confusion over the meaning of Semite and Antisemite comes from.
Abraham’s children were pretty prolific breeders, eventually giving birth the three Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, each of which grew into numerous sects and divisions, causing more than enough conflict of who or what God is and what that all means, but a telling moment in time was around 90CE.
The Roman Empire ruled over a vast area, from present day England to Egypt and into the Mediterranean Basin, into the Byzantine and well into the Arabian Peninsula. They ruled through governors and the presence of the largest military force yet known in history. And in about 90CE a group of religious leaders and intellectuals kicked up a bit of a fuss in the remote city of Jerusalem. They had their own, different religion and did not think it right to bow down to the invaders and make sacrifices in the form of taxes to their supreme leader, the Ceasar, their God. They would only bow down to their own God the creator God. So, there was a bit of a kerfuffle, their temple was sacked, destroyed and a few people had their noses put out of joint, were expelled from the city, oh more than that, expelled from the Empire.
That was the beginning of the Jewish Diaspora.
It needs to be noted and probably underlined, highlighted with bright fluorescent hi light markers that it was the Jewish religious leaders who were expelled. Not the every day, hardworking Jewish carpenter, fisherman, farmer and so forth. They were needed to provide food and labour for the Roman overlords. Listening to the tales of the Diaspora one would easily believe that all Jewish people left, but as the Israel historian Shlomo Sand points out in his book The Invention of the Jewish People, it, throughout history has been that only the leaders, the thinkers, the religious leaders posed a danger to the authority of an invading Imperial force, the invaded people were invariably farmers, fishermen, graziers, food producers and the invaders needed food to feed their armies.
A modern-day example was the invasion of the Netherlands by Germany in 1940. The Netherlands were one of the invaded breadbaskets to feel the Nazi war machine.
And so the rabbis and priests left, travelled north and into Eastern Europe, taking with them their religion, proselytising, converting ‘heathens’ to the promise of salvation from their sins, spreading Judaism into the region, and conflicting with the various political and religious changes which occurred through the following two thousand or so years, constantly living on the edge of the mainstream wherever they went.
The original rabbis and priests would have been defined as Semite. They were, according to the mythology referred to, descendants of Shem. The new converts not so much. The biblical lineage or mythology does not seem to consider their origins, but they were not Semitic peoples, the ones remaining, farming the land and two thousand years later looking through the fence surrounding Gaza, enclosing them from their traditional lands, the Palestinians may actually have a stronger claim to the term Semite than the new settlers who have come from Europe to claim the Zionist Homeland.
So it is interesting to have the term Antisemitic being used when it is seen actually misused, a complete inversion of the original meaning of the term.
It was in my mind to use the word ‘sorry’ in concluding because I have played loosely with a mythology, even dared to call mythology what is foundational to what many believe to be the foundational stories of their faith/s, but no, I am not sorry at all when I see those faith/s being used as an excuse for genocide, as an excuse to assert some kind of exceptionalism that leads to acts of terror against those who do not share a particular interpretation of that mythology, that devalues lives which are contrary to the lives the religious fundamentalists insist on to the point that they can be sent off to their final judgement, to face the eternal punishments for non-adherence to mythological beliefs.
And to so misuse the term Semite to render it an obtuse meaning, complete reversal of what it is just another obscenity on the bizarre nature of conflict over unprovable claims of righteous superiority which allows so much suffering for others.
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20 comments
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Kerri
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leefe
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K
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B Sullivan
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Arnd
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Arnd
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paul walter
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Bert Hetebry
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paul walter
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leefe
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Greg Gange
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Arnd
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leefe
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Arnd
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Canguro
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leefe
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Arnd
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leefe
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Arnd
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leefe
Return to home pageThank you for clearing that up.
I had heard that the claim of semitism was a bit dodgy so now I know why.
Language changes. The meanings and uses of words also change over time. It is disingenuous to pretend otherwise. The term “antisemitic” has, for some decades, meant prejudice or discrimination againt Jewish people, regardless of ethnicity or ancestry.
That aside, the sign in the accompanying image has it right: being antiZionist is not the same as being antisemitic. You can decry the behaviour of the Israeli government, the expansioonist settlers and the IDF while having no bias against Jewish people.
Wow! 3 sons, 3 wives… what an incestuous bunch! Unless we count the animals. In which case, Darwin’s theory of evolution suddenly makes so much more sense…the timelines seem a bit screwed up, but who are we to subject the Bible (in its many varied forms) to critical analysis.
Leefe,
Language changes because it is misused, often deliberately. The problem when it changes is that we lose chunks of our vocabulary depriving us of the words we need to express what we originally meant. Not very helpful when the whole purpose of language is to communicate.
Look at the term ‘woke’ for example. It was only coined a few years ago and was meant to convey enlightenment of the way things really are, like the term ‘hip’ that was popularised by the beatnik generation. Barely had the term ‘woke’ entered the language before it was turned into expression of derision to discourage its use. You can’t tell me that that corruption of the word wasn’t deliberately orchestrated.
The same goes for the clumsy term politically incorrect which was used during the early years of the Reagan administration to describe the thoroughly inappropriate nominees that Reagan wished to appoint to his administration. They consisted of scandalous misogynists and racists and the US Congress simply refused to ratify them because they were so outrageously unsuitable to hold the highest executive offices in the land. Again it wasn’t long before the term was altered to the derisive term political correctness which has of course gone mad. Didn’t John Howard have something to do with spreading that corruption of the language in Australia in support of Pauline Hanson? Didn’t he refer to the Politically Correct Brigade going too farYou may recall that he was virtually the last politician to reluctantly condemn her attitudes and thus lose her support and that of her followers.
There are loads of examples throughout history of how political vocabulary has been corrupted to stifle dissent. If you object to the tech giants using their power over the internet to exploit and manipulate people, the media and governments to the detriment of society then you qualify as a Luddite according to that word’s original meaning. Only now the word portrays you as a lunatic opposed to all and any technology.
George Orwell wasn’t commenting on Newspeak as if it was a dystopian fantasy. He was commenting on a real and persistent trend in political discourse.
leefe:
How?
Seriously!
As a native German who has a fairly clear appreciation of the implications of recent German history, how could I possibly go about criticising the actions of the “Zionist” nation state and its institutions, without that ever even only looking like bias against Jewish people generally?
I remind you that I do hold to anarcho-communist perspectives on political philosophy and happily draw on the insights of thinkers like Emma Goldman and Rosa Luxemburg. I am aware of the profit-driven gravitational pull exerted by the state/industrial/military complex on global power politics, including in the Levant.
Etc.
But picking all that apart without ever asking any probing questions of “the Jewish people” seems, to me, an impossible task.
B.Sullivan:
In large part because as it spread throughout mainstream political discourse, it has become utterly risible! Take activistscholars like Robin DiAngelo or Australia’s very own “critical race theorist” Alana Lentin. Their relentless yet utterly aimless hectoring is excruciatingly painful to witness.
I was on the side of political correctness and wokeness, sort of, when it first rose to prominence. I believed it to be a necessary process to deconstruct old, unexamined and received certainties (the “elenchus”), and assumed that it would seamlessly segue to the construction of new insights and new paradigms.
But that did not happen. All that the progressive side of politics is achieving is the unravelling of the old structures. And the piling up of ever higher mountains of nihilistic intellectual fluff without any substance whatsoever.
It is, to me, little wonder that many of those who rely on existing social, economic and political structures to give shape to their own lives, get awfully defensive, and with irritated desperation latch on to strongmen who offer to (re-)establish some sense of certainty and direction.
That the perspectives offered by reactionary strongmen and -women, the Farages, Putins and Netanyahus of this world, will inevitably turn out to collapsing mirages, is, unfortunately, of no immediate help.
A very good little piece from Ross Leigh and amazing it is that people still have to explain in simple terms to a certain sort of person without a load of prevarication, obfuscation and dissembling..
I beleve one Jabotnik said recently, “Palestine for the White Man”
Leefe, because language changes it is useful to examine the origin of words and clearing up the politicisation of words to strip it of its true meaning.
In this case, the mis use or misinterpretation of the term Semite and Antisemite as derived from that is used to further marginalise those who can actually claim the term Semite as their identity based on the origins of the word/name.
Palestinians have their origins in the region which includes Israel/Palestine, most Jews do not.
The misappropriation of the term has been used to marginalise Palestinians both in Gaza and the West Bank, depriving them of their traditions lands and cultures.
It is being used as a weapon of war and has been since before the Nakba of 1948.
Bert.
Anti Semitism in perspective is not, of course, some pheremone specific to “semites” the creates an unconscious reaction of hostilty.
It is a conscious cultural thing that goes back to Hellenistic times and more severely in Roman times. But from here it involves Christianity and as Xtian European culture becomes almost hegmonic, there spreads a resentment towards the Jewish minorities who are more confined to urban crafts, and more sophisticared as bankers and traders, since these are below the dignity of a pious Xtian.
Anti Semitism in the traditional sense involves European attitudes to a minority and an alienated one. 1190 and York pogrom or later pogroms or persecutions of Jews, occured throughout Europe and finally the one to cap off all others, Hitler’s deranged ideas of getting rid of them employing his “final solution”in WW2. The use of the blood libel goes with this ( “Ewige Juden” as rats, in a nazi propaganda film) and we see a strangely reminisicnt thing today in Gaza, with a strange reversal as the underclass there is likewise shoved aside as only the unworthy “terrorists” or criminals or whatever the insult of the day, while the dominants speak in language tinged with coldness.
I digress. Way back before Christ, across the mediterranean, there were ourburst against Minorities in placeslike Egyptian Alexandria.
But modern anti semitism involves European in particular anti semitism, not semitic anti semitism.
The anti semitism image in most peoples minds to do do with superstitious thugs and wily bankers and demented fascists.
In deliberately linking this to modern introspection and critical thinking often from the left, to do with 5-Eyes Imperialism, is a grotesque attempt from the Zionist Lobby trying to escape the spotlight after Gaza to transfer fear and loathing to those exposing THEM!!
It can’t be an accident that such a simple error is compounded in use over and over again becomes almost McCarthyistic.
Arnd:
" You can decry the behaviour of the Israeli government, the expansionist settlers and the IDF while having no bias against Jewish people.
How? Seriously! ”
By looking at what they are actually doing. Would you object to those actions ifi they were perpetrated against – for instance – the population of the ACT by the NSW government? If so, then why don’t you object to what is beiing done in Palestiine by the Israeli government?
The problem is not the fact that the people doing these things are Jewish, it’s the fact that what is beiing done is reprehensible. I have no problem with Jewish people, Israeli or not, who object to what is happening there, even those who remain neutral. I do have a problem with those performing and supporting the actions of the israeli government, the expansionist settlers, and the IDF.
Sully:
So, where do you think we should freeze the English language? In Shakespeare’s time? Pepys’? Austen’s? At the start of the 20th century? And which national version of English?
Have you checked the etymology of, and how much change there has been since their first recorded use, the words you have used in your comments? Because if you’re so adamant about the need for freeziing the natural evolution of language, once you’ve decided on your starting date, you need to compile a full list of acceptable terms and their acceptable uses, and never deviate from it.
Being both autistic and hyperlexic I have a very large vocabulary, good traiining in formal syntax, and reasonable etymological knowledge. I still get mentally derailed by errors in grammar, punctuation and spelling. I am, by nature and training, a pedant. But I can still accept that prescriptivism is ridiculously authoritarian and contrary to natural use and evolution of language. Defining terms is great when you are trying to explore complex issues, particularly to people who use some of those terms differently; in fact, it’s essential. But language is first and foremost about communication, and the most effectiive communication takes into account variations in national, regiional, local, personal and temporal usage.
Bert:
The term’s “true meaning” is at least as much the one it is most commonly accorded as the one derived from its etymology.
According to Douglas Adams, God’s final message to his creation reads…
“We apoplogise for the inconvenience”
That just about sums it up.
Jewish people, per se, are not evil, but what is being perpetrated in “their” name in Palestine by Israel is nothing short of pure evil.
And because of “history” shorter than 100 years ago they get a pass.
I’ll bet israel is in Paris for the olympics, while russia is still not.
leefe:
Well … ?!? If there had been a band of renegade ACTerritorians making incursions into NSW to attack, rape, kill and abduct civilian residents, then NSW riot police making incursions into the ACT would be difficult – but not impossible! – to decry.
The things people do are invariably connected to the principles and doctrines they espouse – “The only principles against which you can really judge a man (or woman) are his own!” – which, In the case of the actions of the Zionist nation state, are the principles of Judaism. Hence, any genuine attempt to develop a better understanding of the conflict will, sooner rather than later, require reference to, and review of, the principles of Judaism.
Arnd:
And the NSW riot police would be justified in destroying all infrastructure throughout the entire ACT and doing everything in their power to prevent assistance for the uninvolved civilians, along with creating more than 10 times as many casualties and deliberately striking at civilian targets? After decades of provocation through support of illegal usurpation of land and assets, and the ongoing marginalisation of Palestinian people?
You can’t look at the events of October 7 in isolation. It wasn’t justifiable; nor was it unprovoked. Both Hamas on the one side and, on the other, the Israeli government, the expansionist elements and the IDF are at fault. None of it is acceptable.
leefe:
Not to you and me. But it is obviously patently acceptable to the IDF and Hamas. Otherwise they wouldn’t be doing what they are doing!
The question for us, now, is what if anything are we (including leefe and Arnd) going to do about the IDF and Hamas adhering much more closely to our principles.
Answer: Not fucking much! We simply can’t. We in the political west have let our democracies deteriorate to such a dismal state of repair that, despite some superficial appearances to the contrary, we have absolutely no meaningful way of making a positive contribution towards the constructive resolution of that, or indeed any other conflict (Ukraine).
Which means that, in addition to subjecting Zionist/Jewish and Palestinian principles to scrutiny, we need to subject our own principles to a critical re-evaluation also.
Arnd, well said sir. Nail, hit, head. Consonant wrt other macro challenges; global warming and fossil fuel corporations’ domination of the issue, armaments industries unrestrained manufacturing footprint and market access, unchecked and in many cases abetted cross-border aggression between countries along with internecine intra-border conflicts, ecological meltdowns with apparently impotent governmental responses… and more, I’m sure.
Arnd:
we need to subject our own principles to a critical re-evaluation also.
Exactly which of the principles I have rrevealed in my comments on this site do you think need re-evaluation? Please, be specific.
(Yes, I am also currently thinking about suggesting you apply that dictum to yourself as wel.)
leefe:
That’s where the problem starts already: as far as I can tell you have not revealed any of your principles at all. You have revealed a severe degree of abhorrence about what is playing out in Gaza, and you have indicated a degree of appreciation that these events cannot be assessed in isolation – but as to the principles that you use, and that you wish others would also use to process these events, I truly have no idea.
Are you a pacifist? Do you consider the absence of armed conflict as the highest ethical or moral aim, which trumps all other considerations, ethical, moral and practical? In which case, there are differences in our respective outlooks, which we could further discuss.
I am not, myself, a pacifist. I have great respect for pacifists, and have been “pacifist-adjacent” since … – oh, I don’t know, age 13. I have revisited the subject of the ethics of armed conflict repeatedly in the intervening five decades – but I have never seen fit, and do not now see fit completely, irrevocably and unilaterally to renounce my “right” to self-defence, and on that basis cannot categorically deny anyone else their “right” to self-defence, either.
On the other hand, I have examined, and found wanting, the still surprisingly widely accepted equivalation of (military) power and (moral/ethical) right. Thus finding myself somewhere inbetween those two endpoints of the spectrum of views on armed conflict (but, as I said: pacifist-adjacent), I do have to think about the principles which might inform my version of Just War reasoning. As do you, leefe!
I do. Constantly! Indeed, our present exchange is part of that ongoing re-evaluation. Over five decades of revisiting this contentious subject, I have gained what I consider valid and valuable insights. But these are the kinds of insights that invariably beget more questions than they answer. So if you have a contribution to make, be assured that they will be received gladly and gratefully
Arnd:
I have said a great deal in various comments on a wide spread of subjects, and they reveal a considerable amount about my principles. I could suggest you, errr, “do your own research”, but I’ll make it a teensy bit easier for you:
Don’t know if it could be called a principle, but I have a profound distrust of extremes and absolutes; I don’t see things in black and white – to me, everything and everyone is mottled in shades of grey. But I am against unilateral violence and excesive force, I’m against the whole concept of “acceptable collateral damage”, what I know of history says that the only “Just War” in modern times was the Allied response in WWII, I accept the existence of Israel within the 1948 borders, I find terrorism repugnant even while I can see why some people resort to it particularly when effectively brainwashed by religious extremists. Plus a lot more.
But first, just remind me as my memory is not entirely sure about this: are you, or are you not, the person who said during a debate that touched on abortion, that you reserved the right to make my reasons for deciding to have one your business? And do you still hold by that principle? Because I know that was the self-declared anarchist who revealed themselves to be just another authoritarian christofascist in drag and I don’t want to throw that term around without being certain it’s aimed in the right direction and I really don’t recall there being two of them here …
leefe:
For me, to deduce from your “comments on a wide range of [individual] subjects” the principles that inform your opinions would have me rely on a lot of second- and third-guessing, reading between the lines, imputation, and philosophical triangulation, to the point of inadvertent verballing. This is far too inherently unreliable and imprecise for my taste.
But seeing how for you, everything resolves into “mottled shades of grey”, maybe that is the best I can expect from you.
For mine: I have identified ideals that I find immensely useful in navigating the thorny thickets of political and ethical disputation, and which shine a seriously strong light on the political landscape and make it appear in much starker “black-and-white” relief. If you are interested in a technical hint: I am talking in terms of the binary thought processes of dialectics.
Being German myself, I am somewhat reluctant to get drawn into that debate – but my inner communist had his curiosity pricked by an assertion I came across many years ago that said that WWII could have been concluded much more quickly by just rounding up a few dozen international bankers and financiers, taking them on a boat to the middle of the high seas, and shooting one at random every morning at sunrise, until the war ends. Food for thought, ey?
So the [Nakba](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Palestinian_expulsion_and_flight%5D doesn’t pose any ethical problems?
I don’t recall the occasion or the context – but yes, it is something that I might have said! If I did, it would be on the basis of my long established understanding that NOTHING any one of us does only affects that person and none other. I do reserve, and indeed keep exercising my “right” (or “capability” – see, for starters, Nussbaum) to think about, reflect on, and seek to develop a better understanding of the reasons and motivations for abortion.
I feel free to do that, because on account of my categorical rejection of coercion (physical, economic, cognitive and emotional) I have no intent, and have left myself with no means whatsoever, of imposing my conclusions and preferences on a woman against her will.
Meaning that, if I ever have to deal with a woman seeking an abortion, I might make some attempt to dissuade her, but if she is not receptive, I would personally offer to drive her to the abortion clinic, and otherwise do my level best to support her through the process. In reality, if it was clear that she had made up her mind, I would actually keep my trap shut completely, for to do otherwise would, in my mind, amount to nothing other than emotional coercion of an already vulnerable person.
As for discussing abortion, in the abstract, on a forum like the AIMN, with people who turn up for discussion of their own free volition – what, exactly, do you say is the problem with my taking up your arguments and responding to them – to make your reasoning and motivations “my business”?
And, leefe, if you don’t mind: I have just given you a nutshell presentation of the one single core principle that informs my whole approach to political philosophy: the ethical refutation of coercion!
Charming. You might indeed be brushing up against the limits of cognitive coercion. Never mind – water off a duck’s back. The authorities of the bourgeois nation state [dish out much worse day in, day out.](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/25/parentsnext-was-meant-to-help-single-mothers-go-back-to-work-instead-it-feels-like-a-new-abusive-relationship%5D
the ethical refutation of coercion
I can go along with that, provided you remember that coercion is a slippery concept when you consider it along with your belief in – as Dirk Tgentili (aka Douglas Adams) once said – the basic interconectedness of all things (which, btw, is something I consider to be a blindingly obvious fact). Is education a form of coercion when you are teaching anything beyond provable fact to powerless and ignorant children, for instance?
The abortion debate which seems to have slipped your mind actually got a bit personal and your comments – whether intentionally or not – sounded decidedly judgmental. And no, I don’t think that was (or is) me being defensive on the subject. And it’s not just women involved, it’s anyone who can get pregnant, regardless of personal gender identity.
Anyway, you do you. I am not, by nature, a black and white person. Life just doesn’t work that way, it’s far too complex to be reduced to a binary.