Notes on Terminology

 

“Terrorists”:

 

Any definition of that word, when honestly applied, also describes the routine behavior of States at war. I see a continuity of violence, from crime, through terrorism, up to the State; the protection rackets that they run differ in size but not in essence.

 

The real crime of the terrorist is making that continuity annoyingly obvious. The terrorist is too big to be a gangster and too small to be a statesman. To promote himself to statesman, he must upset the status quo, which means trouble.

 

“Anti-Semites”:

 

That term is from the 19th-century pseudoscience of “race science”. It is a pseudoscience because humankind is one. Homo Sapiens is a single race; the skin-tint differences are skin deep. Race pseudoscience was invented by imperialists for self-justification.

 

The word “anti-Semite” ostensibly means “against Semites”, a group that includes Arabs as well as Jews; but in practice the term is a euphemism for “anti-Jewish”.

 

I say down with euphemisms. We should retire the term “anti-Semitic”, unless it means against Arabs as well, and replace it with the more direct and honest term “anti-Jewish”. Why parrot some dead imperialist's pseudoscientific euphemism?

 

If you take “anti-Semitic” to mean “against Arabs and Jews”, then Netanyahu and Hamas are both anti-Semitic.