The House of Representatives is trying to pass a resolution making the term “Free Palestine” an official antisemitic slogan.
Republican Representative Gabe Evans from Colorado introduced the resolution in the wake of the attack on a gathering for Israeli hostages in Boulder this week. Mohammed Sabry Soliman, an Egyptian national, has been charged for the attack, during which he yelled “Free Palestine,” according to the FBI.
“Whereas, while shouting ‘Free Palestine,’ an antisemitic slogan that calls for the destruction of the state of Israel and Jewish people, Mohammed Sabry Soliman attacked the peaceful demonstrators with homemade Molotov cocktails,” the resolution reads. House Republicans are expected to vote on the nonbinding resolution next week.
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What is meant by semitic people?
Semitic describes a group of languages — including Hebrew and Arabic — as well as the people who traditionally speak them. Semitic is rooted in the Biblical name Shem, the son of Noah, who is traditionally thought of as the direct ancestor of the Jews and Arabs.
“Semites” as a description of a set of people is as much antiquated a terminology as the word “Aryans”. In fact it was Ernest Renan that first made that distinction in the 19th century to specifically frame history as a tension between Semites and Aryans (cf Hannah Arendt). It’s of course just a bunch of scientific racism bollocks. And it is precisely because of that that the term “antisemitism” has always meant hatred of Jews in particular (in the “Jews vs Aryans” sense).
The only term that persists in the sciences today is the term “semitic languages”, which is basically similar to “indo-european languages”, and which of course has nothing to do with antisemitism.