I am debating some French anti-american/anti-semites

[Mark Tyson]

Some Europeans love to make fun of Americans as racist cowboys, but Europe is no bastion of racial harmony. Not long ago there were some hellacious race riots in Britain involving Asian immigrants.

 

[Drjones]

What is a semite?

 

[RON in PA]

What is a Semite?

Biblically a descendent of Noah's son Shem, ie., the Jews and Arabs.

Speakers of Semetic languages, ie., Hebrew and Arabic.

 

[PATH]

Never cast pearls before swine.

 

[DonP]

Send them to the JPFO site

Send them to the JPFO site and warn them to behave, a lot of our Jews have guns and know how to use them. They may not take too kindly to anti semitism.

For a fun comparison go over the details of how the Warsaw Ghetto defended itself and how vigorously Paris fought back agsint the Nazi troops.

Finally remember froma few years back Letterman's "Top 10 things the French are doing to get ready for German re-unification" ...

• Installing new transmissions in their tanks with 5 reverse gears

• Cutting up bedsheets to make nice hand sized flags to wave

• Installing speed bumps on the Champs Elysee to slow down the next wave of German "tourists"

 

[chaim]

Why are French anti-Semite? Is it because they keep being taken over by Nazis or what?

The French have been among the most antisemetic in Western Europe for several hundred years. Until the Nazis they were far worse than the Germans, and the French police and Vichi France were among the worst collaborators with the Nazis when it came to rounding up their country's Jews. Why are the French so bad, that has been the subject of many books and is a rather hard question to answer.

Oh, for a rather famous illustration of the French attitude towards Jews look up the Dreyfuss affair (Capt. Alfred Drefuss was railroaded on spying charges and when it became known to the French high command that he was actually innocent that information was covered up).

What is a semite?

Jews and Arabs.

As to why antisemetic or anti-semetic is used to describe hatred against Jews and not also Arabs a bit of a short history lesson is in order.

For years people were comfortable with the term "Jew hatred", and many people felt it. However, after the Enlightenment the term sounded archaic and crass (though most people still held the anti-Jewish feelings). In keeping with the PC of the day, and in order to try to sound like the pseudo-scientific racial theories popular with bigots at the time, Jew-hater Wilhelm Marr coined the term antisemetism in 1879 and it caught on. Ironically the guy thought he'd go down in history and be well known for putting a "scientific" face on Jew-hatred yet today no one knows who he was with the exception of a few Jews and historians.