kekseksa

As with most expressions that we constantly hear in use, we tend to assume we understand its significance.  But do we? What for instance is "Semitism"? Or what for that matter is a "Semite"? The people speaking the Hamito-Semitic languages - the only sensible definition I can think of for the term - come from quite a large swathe of the Middle East and Africa.  The great majority of them are in fact - both amongst the Hamitic and the Semitcs - are in fact native speakers of Arabic. The Semitic branch includes the Berbers of North Africa, a fair proportion of the population of the island of Malta, the bedouin Arabs and of course the entire population of Israelo-Palestine of whatever religion. Can one really imagine anybody being "anti" this particualr group of people?

Before coming back to the question of what "anti-semitism" means in practice, and what it more specifically means to those who constantly use the term, let us first consider "racism" and "anti-racism" of which one supposes it to be a sub-genre. Racism, in the sense of a generalised tendency to mistrust or dislike people different from oneself, is a fairly natural attribute of human beings. We do not really learn to be racist; we rather need to learn not to be racist.

It seems to me clear that the road towards an absence of racism lies in a better understanding of identity. Racism invariably involves the reduction of the identity of an individual to what is considered either their community (caste or tribe), their religion or their supposed race, this last being in most cases the most nebulous of categories - to the point in fact where it is virtually imaginary. Most people on the planet are of mixed race, which is to say, they are of no real race at all.

To be continued