>>> "alessandro coricelli" <alessandro.coricelli at rcn.com> 11/19/99 05:27PM >>>
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>From: "Charles Brown" <CharlesB at CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us>
>To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
>Subject: Re: Anti-semitic, anti-immigrant
>Date: Fri, Nov 19, 1999, 4:32 PM
>
> Are you sure anti-Semitism is the correct term outside of Europe ?
the only problem with the term is that not all Jews are semites. The term, I believe, was conied in the 19th century, in Germany. And it means anti-judaism.
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Charles: But the German prejudice against Jews is part of the European history of anti-Jewishness. That European history can't be automatically generalized to areas outside of Europe.
> For
> example, Palestinians are not only Semites, but vicitms of Israeli
> imperialism. Thus, Palestinian antagonism toward Israelit Jews is not the
> response of an oppressor group scapegoating an oppressed group, and is
> fundamentally different than European anti-Semitism.
Israel (the state-nation) is much younger than the anti-judaism of (some) Palestinians.
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Charles: The pejorative "Philistine" in the Bible's Old Testatment is real old too. The point being it is not clear that Jews are the oppressed group in relation to Palestinians even long ago. Sure David slew Goliath in a story in which the Philistines had a big army, but that is the Jewish version of events.
European anti-Jewish prejudice is historically specific, and shouldn't be automatically generalized to other regions and disputes.
CB