For decades, the word “antisemitism” has been politically and culturally narrowed to mean hatred against Jews alone. This narrow usage, while understandable given the trauma of Jewish history, has also allowed for a weaponization of the term that shields state violence, particularly when committed by Israel or its allies. But the deeper harm lies in the erasure of other Semitic peoples—especially Arabs—from the semantic and political space the word should occupy. Reclaiming the term is not about diminishing the suffering of Jews. It’s about acknowledging the full spectrum of Semitic peoples who have been targeted by white supremacy, empire, and religious extremism alike.
Arabs are Semitic. So are Assyrians, Arameans, and many Ethiopians and Eritreans. This is not an opinion or theory—it’s a linguistic and ethnological fact. The Semitic language family includes Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic, Amharic, and Tigrinya, among others. To exclude Arabs from the scope of antisemitism is not just inaccurate—it is a form of intellectual colonialism. It redefines reality to serve power.
The split between “antisemitism” and “Islamophobia” illustrates this problem. “Islamophobia” emerged as a necessary term to name rising hatred against Muslims, especially after 9/11. But in doing so, it created an artificial division. It gave antisemitism to Jews and Islamophobia to Muslims—even though many Muslims, particularly Arabs, are Semites themselves. The split allowed institutions to oppose one form of bigotry while engaging in or ignoring the other. It allowed liberals to condemn neo-Nazi marches while cheering on drone strikes in Yemen. It allowed Zionists to claim victimhood while justifying apartheid and ethnic cleansing in Palestine.
The effects are not just semantic. They are deadly. White nationalists don’t make these distinctions. They hate Jews and Muslims. They target synagogues and mosques alike. They speak of “globalist” Jewish conspiracies and “invading” Muslim immigrants. They see both groups as existential threats to Western, white Christian civilization. The ideology is unified. Our response to it should be as well.
By reclaiming antisemitism as a shared condition of persecution, we can trace patterns that have otherwise been obscured. The same rhetoric used to describe Jews in early 20th-century Europe—parasitic, disloyal, conspiratorial—has been repurposed to describe Arabs and Muslims in the post-9/11 West. The same colonial policies that segregated, surveilled, and demonized Jews have been replicated in the surveillance and policing of Muslim and Arab communities. The same logic that drives Zionist settlers to displace Palestinians mirrors the logic of white settlers displacing Indigenous people across history.
We are not served by separating these struggles. We are not empowered by competing over who suffers more. Solidarity becomes possible when we name the root systems—white supremacy, Christian nationalism, colonialism, and empire—that animate both forms of hate. And solidarity becomes impossible when we deny that Arabs, too, are Semites.
This reframing also forces a reckoning with Zionism’s contradictions. Zionism claims to be the ultimate defense against antisemitism, yet it has aligned itself with some of the most antisemitic forces in the world. From alliances with white evangelical Christian Zionists who believe Jews must convert or perish, to partnerships with far-right regimes that openly flirt with fascism, Zionism has shown again and again that it will tolerate antisemitism—as long as it targets the right kind of Jew, and never the Israeli state. Meanwhile, it treats anti-Zionist Jews—those who align themselves with Palestinians, with ethics, with Judaism’s anti-nationalist traditions—as enemies. And it continues to erase the Semitic identity of Palestinians, Arabs, and other peoples under occupation or siege.
Reclaiming antisemitism means recognizing the shared stakes of Jews and Arabs in fighting hate. It means refusing the linguistic borders imposed by governments, militaries, and propaganda machines. It means naming the violence in Gaza and the West Bank not just as apartheid, not just as ethnic cleansing, but as antisemitic violence—violence against Semitic people.
It also means holding Western governments accountable for antisemitic violence they commit under other names: drone strikes in Yemen, sanctions in Syria and Iran, invasions in Iraq, airstrikes in Gaza, occupation in Palestine, border bans targeting Arab and Muslim refugees. All of these are acts of aggression that disproportionately harm Semitic populations, yet are almost never described as such.
If the term “antisemitism” is to have any moral weight, it must reflect reality. That means expanding—not diluting—its usage. That means recognizing that attacks on mosques and attacks on synagogues are connected. That Gaza and Pittsburgh are connected. That Charlottesville and Hebron are connected. That the enemies of freedom do not respect our artificial linguistic borders, and neither should we.
Antisemitism is not just a Jewish problem. It is a Semitic problem. And the fight against it belongs to all Semitic peoples—together.