Incorrect terminology mars Lagardien’s piece

While appreciating Ismail Lagardien’s important and timely article on the ugliness of the racism that is becoming a response to the coronavirus, I do have a problem with his homology of anti-Semitism and the association he draws with Semitic people or Semitic language, which he describes as including Arab.

Semitic people is an obsolete, racist classification and the Semitic language group includes not only Arabic, but also Amharic, Tigrinya, Hebrew, Assyrian and Maltese.

Anti-Semitism, however, has nothing whatever to do with Semitism but was coined in Germany specifically to mean Jews — not Arabs, not Assyrians and not Ethiopians.

It was designed as a more scientific sounding word than jedenhaaz — Jew hate.

Lagardien is correct in his analysis that COVID-19 is bringing out racism.

Unfortunately, crises so often release the hate of vulnerable people wanting to blame the event on “the other”. Poverty, joblessness, viruses, it is all the fault of “the other”.

It is a pity for a relevant article to be spoilt through the use of incorrect terminology which in itself smacks of racism.

Stuart Diamond, exec director, Cape Jewish Board of Deputies