"Ask A Jew" Wednesday

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[u/EgyptianNational]

Okay I’ve been waiting for this. (I appreciate your patience with me mods).

I am an Arab Muslim and am highly involved with the Arab community in the west. Particularly young men (15 to 25). I am also educated in both the west and the Middle East so I tend to have perspectives rooted in my reality. So I do apologize if anything I say comes off as hateful or offensive. It’s not my intention and if you inform me I’ll be sure to rectify.

I have two main questions:

how do Jewish people feel about Arabs using the term semites? and by extension how do you feel about expanding the term antisemitic to Include Arabs?

Some organizations and positions in regard to antisemitism have been struggling with accusations (it actually happened) of racism and bigotry. For example, A local pride chapters antisemitism task force had to disband after its members were found to have been using the organization to keep queer Arabs out of the organization committee. As a result of this and other similar cases I’ve been approached with the possibility of expanding the role to include racism towards all Semitic peoples.

Would this be something you could see yourself participating in?

would the mods and the community at large consider allowing a certain number of Arab people direct access to the community?

I find myself often in need to ask Jewish people questions. While there are a few of you who have reached out I’m often looking for a wide variety of opinions to take into account.

There is a anti-Zionist rabbi who tries to make himself available to us but we don’t want to take everything he says to us as final nor do we want to bother him with every minor question about Judaism asked by a 15 year old. (I know google exists, but if we could trust 15 year olds or even 20 year olds with it, we wouldn’t be where we are as a species)

Often times people are not looking for the political and often Zionist rooted answers but are looking for the perspective of members of their community. (As a side note, if any Jewish people want to volunteer with the Arab communities in Alberta, Canada reach out!)

[u/Saul_al-Rakoun → u/EgyptianNational]

Answer 1:

We're not hated because we're a semitic people, we're described as "semites" because we're hated by Europeans. Antisemitism as a term was the more respectable, objective, and "scientific" replacement for classical judenhass at a time when that was considered backwards. Antisemitism is specifically about imagining countless and unending schemes by the Elders of Zion to subjugate and racially mongrelize whatever Christ-fearing Nation we live amongst. It is from this worldview that the Nazis organized, gained power in the early 1930s, and then conducted their preemptive defensive strike against European Jewry from 1939 - 1944.

To put perhaps too fine a point on it, the Arab relationship to antisemitism is that the Charleston neo-Nazis would never have chanted "the Arabs will not replace us!", they would only have chanted "the Jews will not replace us with the Arabs". Now, it is possible for Arabs to experience antisemitism, but first we're going to have to convene the beit din so you can convert.

I certainly know the phenomenon you're talking about, where "Jewish safety" is used as a cudgel against Arabs. Expanding the definition of antisemitism without regard to its meaning sets off my antisemitism warning bells; on the other hand, explicitly identifying this kind of behavior as a particular variety of Arabophobia or Islamophobia is completely appropriate.

Answer 2:

I'm not a mod, but I'd be up for this personally, yes. Message me whenever you need.

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