Antisemitism means hatred of Jews.
This is not a rhetorical position or a political preference. It is the historically established meaning of the term, grounded in its origin, affirmed by scholarship, and adopted by governments and international institutions worldwide.
Attempts to redefine antisemitism as hostility toward “Semitic peoples,” or to portray its identification as an attempt to silence political criticism, are not misunderstandings. They are distortions that serve to obscure, excuse, or deny Jew-hatred.
1. What Antisemitism Means
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition, adopted on 26 May 2016, states:
“Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews.”¹
This definition is used by governments, universities, courts, and civil society institutions across Europe, North America, and Australasia. It identifies Jews — explicitly and exclusively — as the target of antisemitic hostility.
Holocaust scholar Helen Fein defined antisemitism more fully as:
“A persisting latent structure of hostile beliefs towards Jews as a collectivity … designed to distance, displace, or destroy Jews as Jews.”²
Across disciplines, the point is uncontested: antisemitism refers to prejudice against Jews.
2. What Antisemitism Does Not Mean
Antisemitism does not mean hostility toward “Semitic peoples.”
No such group exists in historical, ethnic, or political terms. Semitic is a linguistic classification referring to a family of languages, including Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic. It does not describe a people united by identity, experience, or fate.³
Hatreds are named for their targets, not for abstract linguistic categories. No one argues that:
- Francophobia applies to all Romance-language speakers, or
- Sinophobia applies to all speakers of Sino-Tibetan languages.
The same logic applies here. Antisemitism targets Jews.
3. Why the Term Exists
The word antisemitism was coined in 1879 by German political agitator Wilhelm Marr, who sought to rebrand Judenhass — Jew-hatred — as a modern, racial ideology rather than a religious prejudice.⁴
Marr’s intent was explicit. He was describing hostility toward Jews, not toward speakers of Semitic languages. The term was never meant to be neutral, expansive, or transferable.
Modern spelling conventions reflect this reality. Institutions such as Encyclopædia Britannica and the IHRA recommend the unhyphenated form antisemitism to avoid the false implication that the word refers to opposition to some entity called “Semitism.”⁵
4. The “Semitic Peoples” Deflection
The claim that Arabs cannot be antisemitic because Arabic is a Semitic language is a category error. It confuses linguistics with prejudice and functions as a deflection rather than an explanation. Arabs are indeed speakers of a Semitic language, as are Ethiopians, Maltese and others — but antisemitism has never targeted “Semitic language speakers” as a category. It targets Jews.
This argument gained traction in political discourse in the mid-20th century as accusations of antisemitism increasingly intersected with Arab-Israeli and Islamist contexts. Whether advanced through misunderstanding or intent, the effect is the same: Jewish specificity is erased.
Historians of antisemitism have repeatedly stressed that antisemitism is a distinct and continuous hatred of Jews, not a generic form of ethnic or linguistic hostility.⁶
5. Israel Criticism Is Not the Issue
Identifying antisemitism is not an attempt to suppress criticism of Israeli policy.
The IHRA definition explicitly states:
“Criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.”¹
While the definition’s core enjoys broad acceptance, some scholars have debated the application of specific illustrative examples. This debate, however, does not undermine the fundamental clarity: antisemitism targets Jews, and identifying it is not censorship but discrimination analysis.
Criticism becomes antisemitic only when it:
- Targets Jews collectively for the actions of the Jewish state,
- Applies standards not demanded of any other nation,
- Uniquely denies Jews alone the right to self-determination,
- Or invokes classic antisemitic tropes about Jewish power, conspiracy, or disloyalty.⁷
This distinction is recognised by the European Commission and other international bodies. Naming antisemitism in such cases is not censorship; it is discrimination analysis.
6. Why This Matters
This is not an academic dispute.
When antisemitism is redefined as something broader, vaguer, or linguistic, Jews lose the language needed to name a specific hatred directed at them. When the identification of antisemitism is portrayed as manipulation or bad faith, the accusation becomes part of the prejudice itself.
This inversion — where the victim is framed as the aggressor for objecting to hatred — is a recurring antisemitic pattern, documented across centuries.
Antisemitism does not disappear because it is inconvenient. It does not become something else because others wish to redirect the conversation.
A hatred with a name deserves to be called by it.
References
- International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), Working Definition of Antisemitism, adopted 26 May 2016.
- Helen Fein, “Dimensions of Antisemitism: Attitudes, Collective Accusations, and Actions,” in The Persisting Question: Sociological Perspectives and Social Contexts of Modern Antisemitism, ed. Helen Fein (Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 1987), 67.
- Encyclopædia Britannica, “Semitic Languages.”
- Wilhelm Marr, Der Sieg des Judenthums über das Germanenthum (Berlin, 1879).
- Encyclopædia Britannica, “Antisemitism”; IHRA, Spelling of Antisemitism.
- Shmuel Almog, Antisemitism Through the Ages; Deborah E. Lipstadt, Antisemitism: Here and Now (2019).
- European Commission, Combating Antisemitism: Definition and Examples, Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers.
