It was in 1879 when the German writer Wilhelm Marr first coined the term ‘anti-Semitism’. He was not referring to all Semites but only Jews. In The Way to Victory of Germanicism over Judaism, Marr’s use of the word ‘anti-Semitism’ intended to rationalize, racialise, and give scientific credibility to the hatred of Jews, Judaism, and Jewish culture and nothing else. This definition of anti-Semitism has stuck over the course of the twentieth century and up until today. However, there are those who are seeking to redefine ‘anti-Semitism’ as a term not specific to Jews but inclusive of Arabs as well.

I can only speculate on where this phenomenon originates. It may have started as a PLO propaganda campaign to counter the charges made against them by Western observers that they are anti-Semitic. “How can we be anti-Semitic? We are Semites as well,” they would say.

But beyond political activism, this phenomenon has also appeared in academia. Again, I can only speculate on its origins but I am inclined to point to Edward Said’s book Orientalism that first appeared in 1978. In this landmark work, Said sets out to write a history of the Western study of the Orient which he really means to be the Arab world. Summing up the fundamental premise of his argument, Said writes: “It is therefore correct that every European, in what he could say about the Orient, was consequently a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric.” Importantly, Said explains that in writing Orientalism he found himself “writing the history of a strange, secret sharer of Western anti-Semitism.” Said tells us that if anti-Semitism is a hatred of Jews that is immune to logic, rationality, and reason than orientalism is not so dissimilar because it also was built on a set of myths about “Semites” (read: Arabs) and consisted of an essentialist view that stood in strong contrast to reality. What both anti-Semitism and orientalism share, we are told, is an undying hostility to a people rooted deep in the history of the West that knows no bounds. By placing orientalism alongside anti-Semitism, Said has made an attempt to undermine the uniqueness of the hatred of Jews throughout world history from ancient Egypt to the modern day, and place the hatred of Muslims and Arabs as an equivalent historical phenomenon.

One of the more recent academic manifestations of this argument is seen in Anne Norton’s Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire (2004). In this book, Norton sets out to expose the roots of the ideas that underpin today’s American foreign policies and relationship with the rest of the world. She points to the influence of one German-born, Jewish intellectual by the name of Leo Strauss who fled Nazi Germany in 1937 and arrived in the United States eventually ending up in the politics department at the University of Chicago. Strauss’ intellectual impact was significant in that he dramatically affected the way political texts were read. Norton writes:

“He would read a passage in a text and ask: “What does this mean?” “What is said?” "Why is it said in this way, with these words?” "Why is this said here, in this passage rather than earlier or later?” He would also ask: “What is not said here?” In the shul and the madrasa, in seminaries and Bible study groups, sacred texts were studied in this way. Political theorists read with the same passion and care, and often in the same way. When Strauss came to the United States, this way of reading had fallen out of favour in the universities.”

It is for this reason that his students and followers (and there were many) state that it was Strauss who taught them “how to read.”

Norton’s central argument is that it is these followers – known as Straussians – who have used and even manipulated some of Strauss’ basic ideas to create a set of values that underpin current American relations with the world. Very much like Said, Norton claims that these ideals are not just manifested in policy but also in domestic culture. What is clear from her analysis is a deep ideological hostility not only to Strauss but to the influential neo-cons. To undermine their stance she resorts to the troubling charge of dual loyalty. Like Walt & Mearsheimer argue, Norton takes the stance that many neocons have aligned themselves so closely with Israel – based on a certain reading of Strauss' essay “Jerusalem and Athens: Some Preliminary Reflections” which described the two opposing poles of the history of Western political philosophy, revelation (Jerusalem) and reason (Athens) – that they have led America down a troubling and dangerous path. Pointing to Paul Wolfowitz, who took classes with Strauss and was a disciple of the leading Straussian Alan Bloom, Norton writes:

"The grand strategy that Paul Wolfowitz framed in the wake of 9/11 entailed a plan, announced throughout the media, for attacking not only Iraq but Syria and Southern Lebanon. The United States, recognizing its own power and using it wilfully, would inaugurate a new order in the Middle East. The plan was built conceptually and geographically around the centrality of Israel."

Like those who make this argument, Norton does little to substantiate this view and by asserting it she hops on a slippery slope that sees her analysis rapidly descend into an emotional and problematic diatribe. For instance, she believes that “anyone who questions the identification with Israel is routinely met with accusation of anti-Semitism.” Norton, like George Soros who recently expressed the same argument in the New York Review of Books, marshals no supporting evidence to support the claim. (Interestingly, Soros supports his claim that AIPAC stifles debate on Israel by pointing out examples from the New Republic and from Professor Alvin Rosenfeld, both of whom have no connection with AIPAC).

From this assertion Norton goes on to say that the Straussian and neo-con perceptions about America and Israel, and their influence on American foreign policy, have resulted in the rise of anti-Semitism not against Jews but against Arabs. Norton writes:

“America’s intimate and unquestioning relation with Israel has enabled American to do both good and evil. We remember the Holocaust, we say that such a thing must never happen against, and in the protection of Israel we put our hands to that work. In doing so, however, we have put our hands to other work as well. We have licensed anti-Semitism at home and funded it abroad, on the condition that it take the Arabs rather than the Jew as its target.”

Borrowing a key concept from Said, Norton continues:

“Full recognition of the form of American anti-Semitism would oblige us to consider the ways in which our own anti-Semitism has directed American foreign policy, blinding us to the principles of democratic self-rule and national self-determination for the Palestinians, and impelling irrational and unjust wars.”

For this claim no supporting evidence is given. Why does Norton not provide statements by those who actually direct foreign policy declaring a hatred for Arabs and a lack of concern for their welfare, rights, and political existences? Instead she points to a single book by David Frum and Richard Perle, An End to Evil: How to Win the War Against Terror, as if this book is representative of something much larger and as if Frum and Perle exert considerable influence over American foreign policy.

Stemming from this line of argumentation is the troubling attempt to redefine anti-Semitism. This is just one symptom of the state of today’s public discourse in which the way things are described relies on absurd comparative analyses and faulty historical allusions. It is part of an incoherent campaign to undermine the traditional definition of important words for political ends. Why do we continue to see the word Nazi and apartheid used to describe Israel and her policy? Their use fails in three ways: it does not tell us anything significant about Nazism, South African apartheid, or Israeli policy. Why can’t we describe Israel’s action on their own terms? Why can’t hostility and irrational sentiment to Arabs be due its own word? If we utilize Strauss’ analytical methodology to political texts, we must ask why Norton has decided to use ‘anti-Semitism’ to describe anti-Arab sentiment and not another word? By using this term to describe hatred of Arabs do we clarify reality or obfuscate it?

David Zarnett