KAM, as it happens, your college buddy was wrong. he's likely also a big fan of that Koestler character as well, who insists Ashkenazim are all descended from the medieval Khazars -- not that it's a crucial point.
edited in: I just saw Zogby and Deshowitz arguing on CNN. If you don't know which is which, I'd swear Zogby was Jewish, which, in my world-view, is not surprising. And Amin Al Husseini -- Jerusalem's "mufti" of the 30s and 40s -- you would peg as a celt, most likely, with his red hair. Denial that Jews are semites is an odd attitude, not one you're "not supposed to talk about," just plain old crackpot stuff.
But to swap a story for a story: Back in the day, I took a side gig handling a newsletter for the ADC (Arab American Anti Discrimination Committee, the Arab equivalent of the Anti Defamation League.)
One woman asked why I wanted the job at all. I answered "because I don't like Anti Semitism." This met with blank stares all around. I think it took two or three beats for this to sink in. I got the gig, but I'm not sure anybody in that room got the bon mot to this day. Or, maybe they got it, but were pissed off that, at least in the abstract, we could be hated by the same people.
Of course, it's also possible to say that both I and some of the other people in the room, weren't semites at all, if we needed to be native speakers of a Semitic language to be a Semite. Conversely, if we needed to be sprung from such stock, we were all Semites.
I'm comfortable with the term "Anti-Semitism" as its currently used, unless we decide we need to break it into "Anti-Arabism" and "Anti-Judaism" for purposes of this debate.
As for the contention that Jews aren't semites: Kevin, the word of a college buddy is not scholarship. Put more effort into research and a little less into having something avant-garde and shocking to say.
Dan
[This message has been edited by Dan Halberstein (edited August 03, 2006).]
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