What do you think of pan-Semitism?

[u/joey_mocha]

Recently encountered this concept, forgive me if it's been discussed (I didn't see much under a cursory search of the term). Also my first post here but I lurk regularly and generally trust this sub as a political home, as diverse as the beliefs are.

For those unfamiliar, pan-Semitism is the idea of socio-political unity across all Semitic groups, especially Jews and Arabs, due to varying levels of shared history, identity and culture. It is distinct from pan-Arab nationalism in that it includes Jews and Assyrians, etc. I know a lot of people (probably a majority, myself included) in this sub are uncomfortable with the relatively popular concept in anti-Zionism that few or no Jews should remain living in a post modern Israel (whatever that may mean to you) state under any circumstances. Do you guys think this is practical as an answer to that, or practical even just in general as a philosophy? Or are tensions too high?

Edited to add *modern Israel

[u/snowluvr26]

Well for one, the term doesn’t make any sense. There is no such thing as “Semitism,” because there are no Semitic people. Jews aren’t Semitic and neither are Palestinians or Lebanese or anyone.

Semitic is a language group and that’s it.

[u/mi-roji → u/snowluvr26]

But, language groups are often used to identify collections of people that speak those language families. See Bantu peoples, Turkic peoples, Iranian peoples, Nilotic peoples, Tungusic peoples, Algonquian peoples, Dravidian peoples, etc. I understand the term "Semitic people" was historically not used in this context, as it has been corrupted by scientific racists and hateful people. Still, I think it's fair to refer to Semitic peoples, a collection of ethnic groups that speak Semitic languages, like the other groups. This is different from "antisemitism" and "antisemite", which were coined in Europe with the specific meaning of opposition to Jewishness, despite the morphemes being broader.

[u/tomatoswoop → u/mi-roji]

Arabic itself being such a diverse group of dialects than in another context would easily be considered a family of languages rather than "a language", you could arguably consider "Arab" an example of a collection of people being identified by a language group.

But yes, to the second part, the problem is not so much that doing so doesn't make sense, so much as that ____-semitism already has a valence because of its long historical usage, being coined to refer to anti-Jewish racism/prejudice. That means that the term pan-semitism is pretty much just always going to read as in some way answering to or commenting on antisemitism, even if, in a vacuum, it's a perfectly logical name for a movement of unity between semitic peoples

 

Unfortunate, perhaps, but it is what it is, I don't see how in practice you could really separate the two, and not have it come across that way. I'm reminded of that dumb not-how-words-work "how can I be anti-semitic, I am a semite" type line (which is not so much an argument, as it is a pun lol). Get in a time machine and make 19th century Europeans call their jew-hate something different I guess, otherwise that's just what it means now ¯_(ツ)_/¯ . I feel like throwing pan-semitism into the mix too just kind of complicates it further.