Are you anti-semitic if you hate Arabs, considering the definition of “semitic”?
No. Although Arabs themselves frequently speak of “anti-Semitism” as synonymous with anti-Jewishness — before the 1947 partition, for example, Egyptian UN Representative Haykal Pasha warned the General Assembly that partition would bring “anti-Semitism” worse than Hitler’s — frequently they justify or obscure an anti-Jewish action by saying, “How can I be anti-Semitic? I’m a Semite myself.” According to Professor S. D. Goitein, “the word ‘semitic’ was coined by an l8th-century German scholar, concerned with linguistics…. The idea of a Semitic race was invented and cultivated in particular in order to emphasize the inalterable otherness and alien character of the Jews living in Europe.” Another eminent Arabist, Bernard Lewis, dates the invention of the term “anti-Semitism” to 1862, although “the racial ideology that gave rise to it was already well established in the early 19th century. Instead of — or as well as — an unbeliever … the Jew was now labeled as a member of an alien
