Why not simply say anti-Jewish?
The citizens of Saudi-Arabia are semites.
The term “antisemitism” was coined in the late 19th century by German journalist Wilhelm Marr to give a seemingly “scientific” and modern name to traditional Jew-hatred.
It was specifically intended to refer to prejudice against Jews as a supposed race, not as a religious group, which made it distinct from older forms of religious anti-Judaism.
Key Reasons for the Terminology
Shift from Religious to Racial Prejudice: Traditional hostility toward Jews was often religious in nature (anti-Judaism), meaning conversion to Christianity could resolve the prejudice. In the late 1800s, new pseudo-scientific racial theories, influenced by Social Darwinism and eugenics, began to classify people into distinct “races”. Proponents of this new ideology, like Marr, viewed Jews as an unchangeable, inferior, and dangerous “Semitic race,” regardless of their religious beliefs or level of assimilation.
A “Scientific” Sounding Term: Marr used the new term Antisemitismus in 1879 to replace blunter terms like Judenhass (Jew-hatred), hoping the academic-sounding word would lend intellectual legitimacy to his political movement and appeal to a secular, modern audience.
Political Agitation: Marr founded the “League of Antisemites” (Antisemiten-Liga), the first German organization dedicated to opposing the alleged “Jewish spirit” and influence in Germany. The term became widely used by other anti-Jewish political movements throughout Europe.
The Misnomer of “Semitic”
It’s important to note the technical inaccuracy of the term:
Linguistic Roots: The word “Semitic” actually refers to a family of languages (including Hebrew and Arabic) and the peoples who speak them, not a single race or group.
Exclusive Application to Jews: Despite the broader linguistic definition, from its inception, the word “antisemitism” was used exclusively to mean prejudice against Jews. The people who coined and popularized the term focused solely on Jews, largely divorcing the word from its original linguistic context. The term has never been used to describe prejudice against Arabs or other Semitic-speaking peoples.
Today, the unhyphenated spelling, antisemitism, is preferred by many scholars and institutions (such as the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and the Anti-Defamation League) to emphasize that there is no such entity as “Semitism” that it opposes, and to treat it as a unified, specific term for anti-Jewish hatred.