by Yusef Raahman Sudah

Created on: March 24, 2010   Last Updated: May 20, 2012

We give words both meaning and thereby power to influence how we view our world as well as how we view others within our world. Too many times we place our trust in scholars, politicians and even charlatans speaking from altars. Many speakers and writers that are offering clarity to us are using words that they themselves do not understanding. Through these persons we have been lead to believe as "actual" in concepts that are pure fantasy.

There are people and deities that are said to be anti-gentile and there are people that have pronounced that God is bias. Some have proclaimed that god has a "chosen" people. The use of the word Semite has caused much pain and death. The politicians of European countries have killed, harmed and tortured wonderful people based on the confusion surrounding a definition of this word. Murder and suppressive acts are being committed between Semites against each other in a land they both consider "holy".

The definition of Semite as applied to Jewish people is rarerly applied to other peoples even though many other peoples fit the definition.Clearly an assertion that being anti-Israel is also being  anti-Semitic is a distortion not only of truth but of the definition as well and thereby many other peoples place in history; if for no other reasons than that Israel is a country and Semitic makes reference to a people. It does not follow to be in favor of one automatically makes one in favor of or against the other.

By definition, a Semite is a  "Jew, Arab, Assyrian, Aramæan," from Mod.L. Semita, from L.L. Sem "Shem," one of the three sons of Noah (Gen. x:21-30), regarded as the ancestor of the Semites (in the days when anthropology was still bound by the Bible), from Heb. Shem. Semitic (1813 of languages, 1826 of persons) is probably from Ger. semitisch (first used by Ger. historian August Schlözer, 1781), denoting the language group that includes Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, Assyrian, etc. In recent use often with the specific sense "Jewish," but not historically so limited.

 Historically , a Semite is also, a member of a group of Semitic-speaking peoples of the Near East and northern Africa, including the Arabs, Arameans, Babylonians, Carthaginians, Ethiopians, Hebrews, and Phoenicians."

Careful reading of each definition provides an understanding that the range of  Semitic people is not limited to Jewish or Arab people. Clearly all Jewish people are not born in Israel and

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