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Thursday, July 27, 2006

Cultural Illiteracy Exposed among Dems in Congress

Sadly, in today's Washington Post, Howard Dean showed himself to be culturally illiterate by referring to Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki as an anti-semite: "Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean called Maliki an 'anti-Semite' for failing to denounce Hezbollah for its attacks against Israel. " (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/26/AR2006072600230.html)

Unfortunately, other Democrats in Congress also exhibited this same level of ignorance. Here then is the Merriam-Webster dictionary definition of the word, "Semite":

Main Entry: Sem·ite
Pronunciation: 'se-"mIt, especially British 'sE-"mIt
Function: noun
Etymology: French sémite, from Semitic Shem, from Late Latin, from Greek SEm, from Hebrew ShEm
1 a : a member of any of a number of peoples of ancient southwestern Asia including the Akkadians, Phoenicians, Hebrews, and Arabs
b : a descendant of these peoples
2 : a member of a modern people speaking a Semitic language
(end of definition)

Thus it is just about impossible for an Iraqi Arab to be anti-semitic, unless of course he is declaring his hatred for himself, which I don't think Maliki was doing. For that matter it is similarly absurd to imagine Arabs from Lebanon, Jordan, West Bank/Gaza, or Syria as being anti-semitic since they themselves are almost all semitic.

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