View source for Semites and Anti-Semites, by Bernard Lewis

{{short description|1986 book by Bernard Lewis examining the origins and nature of anti-Semitism as anti-Jewish racism}}

'''Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry into Conflict and Prejudice''' is a 1986 book by British-American historian [[Bernard Lewis]]. In it Lewis traces the linguistic origins of the term "Semite," rejects any notion of a Semitic race, and argues that "anti-Semitism" is a specifically anti-Jewish phenomenon invented in 19th-century Europe and never applied to Arabs or other Semitic-speaking peoples.<ref name="Lewis1986">Bernard Lewis, ''Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry into Conflict and Prejudice'' (New York: W. W. Norton, 1986).</ref>

== Chapter 2: "Semites" (pp. 42–57) ==
Lewis opens by explaining that "Semitic" is a purely linguistic term coined in the 1770s–1780s by European scholars for the language family including Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, and others. He states: "The name Semite comes from Shem, the eldest of the three sons of Noah... In the Greek and Latin versions of the Bible, Shem becomes Sem... The term 'Semitic' was coined by European scholars in the late eighteenth century to designate a group of languages... It has no racial connotation."<ref name="Lewis1986" /> 

He stresses there was never a single "Semitic race": "Semites were never a single racial group... The peoples who speak Semitic languages have never constituted a single race... There is no such thing as a Semitic race."<ref name="Lewis1986" /> Lewis dismisses 19th-century pseudoscientific racial theories that tried to link language to biology as "totally implausible" and notes that even the Nazis classified Arabs as Semites but treated them as allies while reserving extermination for Jews.

Lewis discusses the French scholar Ernest Renan, a pioneer of Semitic philology. By 1855 Renan complained that the term "Semite" caused "a multitude of confusions" because it was being misused beyond its strictly linguistic meaning. Renan insisted: "I repeat again that the name Semite here has only a purely conventional meaning." Lewis cites Renan to underscore that the term was never racial and warns against the dangers of conflating language with race or ethnicity.<ref name="Lewis1986" />

Lewis does not cite [[Thomas Carlyle]] or [[Moritz Steinschneider]] anywhere in the book.

== Chapter 4: "Anti-Semites" (p. 83 onward) ==
Lewis examines the term "anti-Semitism," coined in 1879 by Wilhelm Marr specifically as a euphemism for hatred of Jews framed in racial terms (Jews as "Semites" versus "Aryans"). He writes: "The term 'anti-Semitism' was coined in 1879 by Wilhelm Marr... specifically for racial hatred of Jews... It has never meant hatred of Arabs or other Semitic peoples."<ref name="Lewis1986" />

Lewis directly addresses the claim "We can't be anti-Semitic; we are Semites" as "self-evidently absurd": 

:To all this, and much else besides, a common answer, given by or on behalf of Arabs, is that they cannot be anti-Semitic, since they themselves are Semites. The logic of this would seem to be that while an edition of Hitler's Mein Kampf published in Berlin or in Buenos Aires in German or Spanish is anti-Semitic, an Arabic version of the same text published in Cairo or Beirut cannot be anti-Semitic, because Arabic and Hebrew are cognate languages. 4 It is not a compelling argument.<ref name="Lewis198616">Lewis, p. 16</ref>

Later he writes:
:The argument is sometimes put forward that the Arabs cannot be anti-Semitic because they themselves are Semites. Such a statement is self-evidently absurd, and the argument that supports it is doubly flawed. First, the term "Semite" has no meaning as applied to groups as heterogeneous as the Arabs or the Jews, and indeed it could be argued that the use of such terms is in itself a sign of racism and certainly of either ignorance or bad faith. Second, ''anti-Semitism has never anywhere been concerned with anyone but Jews'', and is therefore available to Arabs as to other people as an option should they choose it.<ref name="Lewis1986117">Lewis, p. 117</ref>


:In principle, of course, the Germans were not just anti-Jewish, but anti-Semitic, and the Arabs as well as the Jews were theoretically subject to the hostility and contempt implicit in Nazi racist ideology. Some Germans, including the Fiihrer himself, did indeed view the Arabs in this light, and there is no lack of derogatory references, in the German documents, to Arab racial origins and attributes. But this racist doctrine seems to have had remarkably little effect on German-Arab relations.<ref name="Lewis1986146">Lewis, p. 146.</ref>

Lewis concludes that anti-Semitism is a unique form of racism targeting Jews alone, rooted in European pseudoscience and Christian theological traditions, not a general prejudice against all Semitic peoples.

== Assessment ==
Lewis's argument is often regarded as consistent and empirically grounded in linguistic history, Nazi policy, and Arab political rhetoric. He rejects racial essentialism entirely and claims the term "anti-Semitism" was never neutral or inclusive of Arabs. The book uses the linguistic discussion in Chapter 2 as foundation to demonstrate in Chapter 4 that "anti-Semitism" is not symmetric racism but a specific anti-Jewish ideology.

== Notes ==
<references />

[[Category:Books about anti-Semitism]]
[[Category:1986 books]]
[[Category:Bernard Lewis]]
[[Category:Anti-Arab racism]]
[[Category:Zionism]]