The term Semitic refers to an ethnic, cultural or racial group that is associated with people of the Middle East that includes the groups of Arabs, Akkadians, Phoenicians and Jews. The terminology is now largely unused outside the grouping “Semitic languages” in linguistics, first used in the 1770s by members of the Göttingen school of history. The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family that include (Arabic, Amharic, Aramaic, Assyrian, Hebrew, Maltese and numerous of other ancient and modern languages) They are spoken by more than hundreds of millions of people across much of West Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, Malta, in large immigrant and expatriate communities in North America, Europe, And Australasia.
The first three ethnic groups or tribes are currently referred to as Arabs or Middle Easterns that currently speak the one and only one language that they have been speaking for over 14 centuries, since the early Islamic conquests (Also known as Arab conquests) that were initiated in the 7th century by Muhammed, the founder of Islam, it was spread wildly with the spread of Islam that spanned Sicily, most of the Middle East and North Africa, and the Caucasus (a region spanning Eastern Europe and Western Asia). As per today the ISO assigns language codes to 32 varieties of Arabic! (To clarify the confusion of non-Arabs asking whether if Arabs from different Arab countries understand each other or not, the answer is we mostly do regardless the accents, and if anot, we have the Modern Standard Arabic or Classical Arabic).
Jews and Muslims or Jews and Arabs in the 21st Century have much political, social, and religious concern about their relations in the world, but it was not always this way. At a time, they have lived side by side, worked together, studied together and even today, there are many similarities the way Islam and Judaism are observed from a religious perspective. This common era is a hopeful sign of the potential for good things to come in our world.
This interesting map called the T and O map, from the first printed version of Isidore’s (a Hispano-Roman scholar) Etymologiae (known as Origins) identifies the three known continents as populated by descendants of Sem (Shem), Iafeth (Japheth) and Cham (Ham) the Sons of Noah who likely lived in the ancient Near East, potentially Mesopotamia (Iraq region now).
Jews, the fourth Sematic ethnic group together with (Arabs, Akkadians, Phoenicians) are believed to be the descendants of Sem, the Son of Noah, hence the Term Sematic, Semitic or Semitism.
Anthropologists of the 19th century such as Ernest Renan readily aligned linguistic groupings with ethnicity and culture, appealing to anecdote, science and folklore in their efforts to define racial character. Renan had acknowledged the importance of the ancient civilisations of Mesopotamia (Iraq region now), Israel, etc… but called the Semitic races inferior to the Aryan (Indo-Iranians) for their monotheism (the belief of one God as a singular existence), which he held to arise from their supposed lustful, violent, unscrupulous and selfish racial instincts. So, some might characterise Renan’s ideas as Anti-Semitic prejudice!
In 1879, the German journalist Wilhelm Marr began the politicisation of the term by speaking of a struggle between Jews and Germans in a pamphlet called Der Weg zum Siege des Germanenthums über das Judenthum (“The Way to Victory of Germanism over Judaism”). He accused the Jews of being liberals, people without roots who had Judaized Germans beyond salvation. In 1879, Marr’s adherents founded the “League for Anti-Semitism”, which concerned itself entirely with anti-Jewish political action.
Zionism initially emerged in Central and Eastern Europe as a secular nationalist movement in 1897, in reaction to the waves of antisemitism, It’s an ethnocultural nationalist movement that aimed to establish a national home for the Jewish people, pursued through the colonization of Palestine, a region roughly corresponding to the Land of Israel in Judaism, with central importance in Jewish history. Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible.
In 1917, the Balfour Declaration established Britain’s support for the movement. In 1922, the Mandate for Palestine governed by Britain explicitly privileged Jewish settlers over the local Palestinian population. In 1948, the State of Israel was established and the first Arab-Israeli war broke out. During the war, Israel expanded its territory to control over 78% of Mandatory Palestine. As a result of the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight, an estimated 160,000 of 870,000 Palestinians in the territory remained, forming a Palestinian minority in Israel.
Israelis and Palestinians who are Jewish and Muslim both have lived, worked, traded and cultivated the Holy Land, back in the time and was merely Kingdoms and Empires, Kingdom of Israel (Currently Jews and Israelis), Philistines (currently Palestinians who are a Greek immigrant group originating from the Aegean civilization from the Bronze Age civilizations of Greece around the Aegean Sea). Kingdom of Israel was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire in the 8th century BCE which exiled much of the Northern Kingdom population and ended its sovereign status. Around that time, the Roman Empire was arising and slowly it took over most of the Mediterranean region.
Jumping to the Jewish–Roman wars, they were a series of large-scale revolts by the Jews of Judaea against the Roman Empire between 66 and 135 CE. The conflict was driven by Jewish aspirations to restore the political independence lost when Rome conquered the Hasmonean kingdom (The Hasmonean dynasty, was a ruling dynasty of Judea (the region dominated by the city of Jerusalem) and surrounding regions during the Hellenistic times, from c. 140 BC to 37 BC. Between c. 140 and c. 116 BC the dynasty ruled Judea semi-autonomously), the Jewish–Roman wars had a devastating impact on the Jewish people, turning them from a major population in the Eastern Mediterranean into a dispersed and persecuted minority.
Throughout history, the Jews or Israelis were always fought and expelled from their land, and they have always tried to comeback to conquer it, being the righteous race or ethnic group to the Holy Land, but it has always amazed and astonished Kingdoms and Empires for its history, strategic location, fertile land and richness in resources (fruits, vegetables, Olive Oil!, and currently Natural Oil).
History is repeating itself, just like all kingdoms, empires or countries have expelled Jews from their land, nowadays we see the same thing happening to Palestinians that are having the same treatment either because of simple Anti-Semitism or merely Fascism (that is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology).
After the Establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Palestinians started having that treatment from the Israelis, since they suffered from it for far too long.
So, Palestinians were massacred, slaughtered, stolen from just as how Jews were treated that way.
Today I ask myself, knowing that I’m Semitic, what are my roots with my Black Hair, Slightly Dark Skin and Brown Eyes, Palestinian or Jewish? Maybe both. They have always lived in harmony.
Another question is: Is it all history or are they just Roman Italian terrorists?