TIL the term "Semite" refers to both Jews and Arabs collectively.

@freemo Really? So, by that logic, Islamophobia is antisemitic?

@freemo Hmm, interesting. So, I wonder what the more specific term would be. Antijudaic?

@LouisIngenthron Interestingly despite a semite including all speakers of a semetic language, including jews and arabs, in general practice antisemite refers exclusively to jews... very confusing I know.

@freemo @LouisIngenthron I have never understood this. It gets more confusing when the Ashkenazi are Mediterranean Greek ancestry, and not Semitic. I had someone try to explain how "jewish" was both an ethnicity and a religion once, but the argument seemed to revolve around ignoring testable objective reality.

@JonKramer @freemo It's a common argument. Even the Wikipedia page calls the Jewish people an "ethnoreligious" group.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jews

@LouisIngenthron @freemo , yes, it seems to be common. My confusion is why it's common, but only for Jewish peoples. There has to be some historic reason that just stuck, but since the whole silly history of the theory of different races is fairly new, it doesn't seem to have had time to stick.

@JonKramer

It would seem its common among muslims as well.. I have often seen muslims as being referred to as an ethnic group as well.

@LouisIngenthron

@freemo @LouisIngenthron , yep. But in the case of Islam, there isn't a majority of the people who are from what apparently is a totally separate ethnic group, claiming to be Arab. But yes, there is some level of the same treatment there.

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