A national survey has found 64 per cent of Jewish students say they’ve experienced anti-Semitism at university. At Sydney University the figure was as high as 77 per cent. The word ‘anti-Semitism’ was only coined in 1880, although (perhaps unsurprisingly) there was a related German word some years earlier. The man who coined the word appears to have been a German journalist and publisher named Wilhelm Marr, who wrote influential anti-Semitic articles and pamphlets.
Originally the word ‘Semite’ meant any of the people mentioned in Genesis chapter ten as descendants of Shem, one of the sons of Noah. To this is added the prefix ‘anti-’ to express antagonism.
Most of us are baffled by this anti-Semitic aggression – we thought the horrors of the Holocaust had made this type of racism impossible. But when students report being called a ‘dirty Zionist Jew’ it is clear that aggression towards Israel is being used to mask a deep hatred of Jews. In this latest survey 37 per cent of the Jewish students said they’d seen Israel compared to Nazi Germany.
According to these reports it is the progressive side of politics, including the left-wing of the Labor party, that harbours and breeds this new kind of anti-Semitism (masked by pretending to be only anti-Israel). And there are some leading lights of the ALP who seem to take this line. They would be horrified if they were called anti-Semitic – but how can they be called anything else?
Article by Kel Richards appeared in The Spectator.
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