The word "Anti-Semitism” is a masculine noun, used to designate everything that is hostileto the Jewish people and culture.
If we start with an etymological analysis, we find that anti-Semitism refers to all speakers of Semitic languages, such as Hebrews, Assyrians, Arameans, Phoenicians and Arabs. These people would be descendants of Without, firstborn of Noah.
Therefore, hardly anyone can be, in fact, anti-Semitic, as this would imply asserting that it is against Semitic languages.
This is even more true in the case of Arab anti-Semitism, as it would have to be against its own linguistic origin. In this case, the more correct term is, therefore, anti-Zionism.
Therefore, we can consider anti-Semitism as the ideology that nurtures hatred and aversion to all ethnic and socio-cultural aspects of the Jewish people.
This system of ideas has been built over more than twenty centuries of history and has political, social, economic and religious implications.
On one side the religious anti-judaism was strengthened by accusing the Jews of the death of Christ (deicide). On the other hand, they allege that this people got rich by practicing usury (practicing loans) at the expense of other nations.
More recently, nineteenth-century racial theories justified the domination of Jews, who were considered inferior. These theories legitimized the discourse that they were only interested in national wealth, as they did not yet have a nation of their own.
Origin of Concept
The concept "Anti-Semitism” appeared between 1879 and 1880, when Wilhem Mahrr (1819-1904), German journalist and founder of the anti-Semitic league, launched the book “Zwanglose anti-semitsche hephth”.
In this work, she advocates a more "scientific" classification for the term "judenhass,” which referred to the hatred of Jews as a whole.
History
We know that Jews were already persecuted during the Roman Empire.
Hatred of Jews grew in antiquity. Christians did not accept the fact that Judaism claimed that Jesus was just another prophet and that the Hebrews were responsible for the Messiah's death.
During the Middle Ages, it was no different: in the 11th century, Jews were persecuted during the Crusades.
At the end of the 13th century, they were expelled from England and, at the end of the 15th century, banned or converted to Christianity in Spain and Portugal.
However, no anti-Semitic massacre has equaled the Holocaust of World War II, which resulted in the deaths of millions of Jews.
Furthermore, the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, when the Jewish people began to reside in their own territory, in the region of Palestine, deserves to be highlighted.
However, escalating conflicts with the Arabs could take anti-Semitism (or anti-Zionism) to a new stage.
Read too:
- Judaism
- Racism
- Xenophobia
- Nazism
Holocaust
In 1933, the Nazi regime came to power and suppressed all civil rights of Jews in German territory, allowing them to be used as a “scapegoat”.
adolf hitler (1889-1945) accuses them of being the cause of the evils that occurred in the country, since, according to the dictator, they would only be interested in exploring and making a profit.
As a result, millions of Jews are sent to concentration camps or murdered in ghettos. In total, more than 6 million Jews were killed in the historic event that became known as Holocaust.
Know the story of Anne Frank, one of the victims of the holocaust.
Understand more about this subject:
- World War II movies
- 6 Films about Hitler, the Nazi dictator
- Nuremberg Court: the judgment that condemned the Nazis
