Critical Analysis
Anti-Semitism and Arabs
By Ghali Hassan
Nov 2, 2005, 21:31
Ur-Fascism can come back under the most innocent of disguises. Our duty is to uncover it and to point our finger at any of its new instances — every day, in every part of the world.
- Umberto Eco, NY Review of Books, June, 1995.
To Israel’s friends and supporters of its colonial policy in Palestine, ‘anti-Semitism’ means; any criticism of Israel’s brutal policy against the Palestinians and any criticism of Zionism and its racism that continues to inflict great harm on Arabs and Muslims. The real victims of today’s Western anti-Semitism are Arabs and Muslims, not Jews.
The term ‘anti-Semitism’ has nothing to do with religion. It originated in 18th century Europe where philologists used the term ‘Semite’ to distinguish languages from each other by grouping them into ‘families’ originating from the so-called ‘mother’ tongue to which they are related. Despite the lack of a common ancestral language, Arabic, Aramaic, Amharic, Assyrian, Hebrew, etc. where [sic] grouped as ‘Semitic’ languages. For both Arabic and Hebrew, the classification was incorrect. In other words, neither Arabic nor Hebrew is Semitic.
This is quite wrong. All these languages, including Hebrew and Arabic, do have an ancestral language that is called "Proto-Semitic" for the sake of convenience. ("Semitic" comes from the legendary biblical ancestor "Shem" in the book of Genesis.) Proto-Semitic broke up into various Semitic languages and proto-languages before writing was available, so no texts survive in it, but its existence is clear from linguistic reverse-engineering of the surviving Semitic languages. This is elementary knowledge to anyone trained in Semitic philology.
With the rise of European racism against minorities in the 19th century, European Jews where [sic] targeted. Differences between Jews and other European citizens have to be manufactured. Since European Christians (the Protestant Reformists) adopted the Hebrew bible, religion was not an option for those differences. The Jews were identified as ‘Semites’ based on the incorrect assumption that their ancestors spoke Hebrew, which wasn’t the case. Ancient Hebrew tribes were Aramaic speakers.
This is bizarre. It is perfectly clear from the Hebrew Bible and numerous Iron Age Hebrew inscriptions that Hebrew was the language spoken by the ancient Judeans and Israelites. If I may quote myself:
While I am discussing inscriptions, it is worth noting that the epigraphic evidence makes it clear that speakers of Hebrew engaged in a monumental building project in Jerusalem around 700 (the Siloam Tunnel inscription). Other excavated Hebrew inscriptions in Jerusalem around this time include the Silwan tomb inscription, the Ophel ostracon, and an ostracon from Arad that mentions "the king of Judah." Substantial corpora of Judean Hebrew correspondence by worshipers of YHWH were found on ostraca from the end of the Iron Age (late 600s to 586/87) at Lachish and Arad. The Lachish letters mention "the king" (##3, 5), "the prophet" (#3), and possibly (the reading is damaged) "Jerusalem" (#5). The Arad ostraca also refer to "the king" (#24). These are all excavated inscriptions whose genuineness is not in doubt.
The Arameans in what is now Syria spoke Aramaic (the CAL website seems to be jammed at the moment, but here's the Google cache version of their "Aramaic" article.) After the Babylonian Exile, the Persian Empire used Aramaic as its diplomatic language, which resulted in its being used all over the ancient Near East in the Persian period and widely for centuries thereafter. Again, anyone who knows anything about the history of the Semitic languages knows this.
The article also makes the daft revisionist claim that "Judaism, Christianity and Islam are all part of Arab culture."
If this is an example of "critical analysis" by the Axis of Logic, I'm not impressed.
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