Researched by Mr A. Tilling

On many occasions, the Israeli government has dismissed criticism of its policies and actions as being ‘anti-Semitic’. The term was originally coined in around the nineteenth century and has increased in use since the terrible atrocities committed by the Nazi regime and their supporters against Jews in early twentieth century Europe. Now the term appears to have given some of the descendants of those who suffered from hostility towards Jews in Europe virtual immunity when it comes to the modern-day political actions of the Zionists in Israel. Those ardent defenders of Zionism, the US political administration, have also leapt to Israel’s defence upon hearing of criticism against the regime by some of the European governments that have some sympathy towards the persecuted Palestinians, and they have also highlighted Europe’s Anti-Semitic history suggesting that this is somehow influencing their position on this issue. One has to ask therefore – is the Zionist regime of Israel the victim of Anti-Semitism?

Firstly, one needs to consider what the term ‘Semite’ refers to before one can understand its antithesis. The Pan Macmillan Encyclopaedia provides the following definition:

Semites – a group of peoples, including the Jews and the Arabs, said in the Bible to be descended from Shem, Noah’s eldest son. The Semetic languages consist of a group of languages spoken in North Africa to the Southwest corner of Asia. Examples are Aramaic, Hebrew, Arabic, Ethiopic and Maltese.

Therefore, a Semite does not only refer to Jews, but to all peoples who speak Semetic languages and this certainly includes Arabs. Israeli society is in fact dominated by people ethnically known as ‘Ashkenazi’ Jews, referring to the Jews that have a Germanic and Slavic background who have migrated in large numbers from Europe and the USA since the state of Israel became firmly established. Today, around 85% of all Jews are Ashkenazim. According to Abraham Pollock, Professor of Medieval Jewish History at Tel Aviv University: "The large majority of world Jewry is descended from the Jews of Khazaria" [From: The Thirteenth Tribe by Arthur Koestler, Random House, 1976 p226]. Most of these Ashkenazi Jews actually have no ethnic or historical connection with ancient Israel and are actually descendants of a Turkic people who created a kingdom called Khazaria, and the sovereign of this kingdom embraced Judaism in the seventh century. This is supported by the American People’s Encyclopaedia 1964 [15-292] which records that: "In 740 the Khazars officially converted to Judaism…it is from this grouping that most German and Polish Jews are descended and they likewise make up a considerable part of that population found in the USA. The term Ashkenazim is now applied to this…division". Dr Alfred Lillenthal, who has spent his life in educating Americans about the Middle East, writes that: "That the Khazars are the lineal ancestors of Eastern European Jewry is a historical fact".

Jewish historians and religious textbooks acknowledge this fact, though propagandists of Jewish nationalism belittle it as ‘pro-Arab propaganda’ [From: What Price Israel, Henry Regency, 1953]. He also adds in the same book: "These Askhenazim Jews…have little or no trace of Semitic blood" [p222]. Thus based on this evidence, one may reasonably conclude that the majority of Jews in the world today are actually not Semites, neither by descent nor by ethnicity, as most of the Jews in Israel, Europe and the Americas are culturally more European anyway seeing as their ancestors became almost fully immersed in European culture because they lived in Europe for centuries.

The only peoples in the modern state of Israel who can properly be regarded as Semitic, both in terms of ancestry and culture, are the Arabs. The term ‘Arab’ however is purely an ethnic term and does not have any religious connotation. The majority of Arabs in Israel today [if one includes Palestinians in this definition, who territory-wise mainly live within Israel’s borders even if they do not have citizenship status] are [what are popularly called] ‘ Muslims’. There are also Arab Christians [at one time, one in five of the Arab inhabitants of Palestine was Christian, and Bethlehem was once 95% Christian] and Arab Jews living under the Zionist regime. This may surprise a lot of people, as the common misconception is that Arab always equals ‘Muslim’, but this is as untrue as the delusion that the Israel-Palestine conflict is a holy war between Jews and ‘ Muslims’. The Arab Jews are called ‘Mizrahim’ who had lived in parts of North Africa, Yemen and the Levant region for millennia. ‘Official’ Israeli history presents the emigration of the Mizrahi to Israel as being the result of ‘anti-Semitism’ within the countries they had lived or for certain religious reasons. This however does not explain the economic interests of the Ashkenazi Zionists and the fact that many of the Arab Jews lived relatively peacefully alongside the other non-Jewish Arabs before. There is evidence of these Arab Jews being victims of discrimination in today’s Zionist society [despite this being portrayed as a liberation movement for all Jews!] – the infamous kidnapping of 600 Jewish Yemenite babies by Israeli medical and social care professionals to give to childless European Jewish couples is an example often used to illustrate this.

The Arab Jews, as well as non-Jewish Arabs, constitute the majority of the lower economic classes of Israel. Some groups have formed protesting against the continued building of luxurious homes for newly arrived immigrants coming in from the USA and Europe while the majority of Mizrahim have to put up with lower quality living conditions [Ref: Arab Jews by Adam Hanieh 2000]. In addition, Arab Christians have also suffered from the tyranny of the Zionists. Bethlehem’s mayor Hana Nasser told Reuters [November 04, 2000] that "this intifada [uprising] is a Palestinian intifada, not ‘Muslim’, not Christian. We consider ourselves to be Palestinians before anything else". Reuter’s also interviewed Father Jacob of Bethlehem’s Orthodox Church, who stated that: "We suffer just as much as the Muslims because we are all in the same boat," while marching in the funeral procession of a Muslim youth killed by Israeli gunfire this week. "Our destiny is the same, we are all parts of one body. Unfortunately, this body is diseased and we will all do what we can so that it can fight off this disease." Even though most victims are always going to be ‘ Muslims’, as most Arabs living with Israel’s borders adhere to ‘Islam’, one can see quite clearly that the Zionist regime is not discriminating on a religious basis here, but on an ethnic one.

Israel Shamir, a Tel Aviv journalist who has worked for the newspaper Ha’aretz and the BBC, writes that: "The problems of the Middle East are ugly enough without the current ‘Muslim’-bashing. The pro-Israeli pundits of the New York Times quote the blood-curling verses..retell the old traditions of religious wars and persecutions, to ‘prove’ ‘Islam's’ cruelty and intolerance. They are repeated by a pleasant upper-class Jewish lady from London, Barbara Amiel…she writes about "exclusivist" Islam and Jewish "moderation" [surely it is the other way around, isn’t’ it?!]. In order to incite hatred, the Israeli lobby works all the ropes. Before the rise of Israel, Arab sheiks were depicted as romantic heroes in movies acted by Rudolf Valentino. Nowadays, the pro-Israel producers of Hollywood turn out propaganda films on ‘Muslim terrorists’ with the subtlety of Edward D. Wood, Jr. This new prejudice is amplified a hundredfold by the Christian Zionist Congress, claiming "protection for Christians of Palestine from the Moslem persecution" (?!). If these Christian Zionists care for Christ, not only for Zion, let them learn what many of the Jews feel towards Christ. Rami Rozen expressed the Jewish tradition in a long feature in a major Israeli newspaper Haaretz[i]: "Jews feel towards Jesus today what they felt in 4 th century or in the Middle Ages: ..."For centuries, Jews concealed from Christians their hate to Jesus, and this tradition continues even now." "He (Jesus) is revolting and repulsive", said an important modern religious Jewish thinker. Rozen writes that this "repulsion passed from the observant Jews to the general Israeli public". [Summarized from: ‘Exposing the Big Lie about Muslims and Christians’ by Israel Shamir, 2001 ]. What I think these attitudes clearly illustrate is not only a hatred towards the current incorrect conceptions about what is popularly perceived as ‘Islam’ in most of Europe and the Americas, but a hatred towards the overall culture of the peoples of the Middle East generally, hence the support for Zionists is not particularly on a religious level, but on a cultural one as the Zionists who dominate Israel, as previously explained, are more ‘Western’ in their culture.