Guest Editorial

This note is dedicated to the memory of our dear friend and colleague, George Awad, MD who helped us all appreciate the perspective of the “Other”.

I never liked the term “anti-Semitism”. You might say I have been anti- anti-Semitism. When I was young, it always sounded too polite, too fancy, too obscure, too intellectual, too like a social movement or a medical condition such as rheumatism. When I got older, I learned that some experts called it a social disease and then I felt vindicated. I still feel that such a term lends itself to endless debate over its meaning, its scope and its application to a certain situations. Given its origin, perhaps it helps to be reminded that the term dates back to 1867 when an obscure German journalist, Wilhelm Marr, founded a political party called the League of Anti-Semites (Antisemiten-Liga). The purpose of this party and its slogan was to unite Germans behind a movement to fight the perceived influence of organized Jewry on society. Marr merged linguistics with ethnic terminology and exploited the fallacy of using biological inheritance to try to explain cultural differences (Fischer, 1998). I guess that prior to the creation of this neologism, hatred of Jews was simply known as Jew-hating. And with the creation of this term - as with other kinds of malignancies - comes the use of other euphemisms which may further obscure the underlying lethal condition. For example, in the field of oncology - the study of cancer - clinicians may use the term such as a “mass”, “neoplastic disease” or “mitotic figures” to denote that rapidly growing collection of cells which, if left unchecked, would multiply out of control, crowd out healthy tissue and vital organs, develop their own blood supply, steal nutrients from healthy tissue and could ultimately destroy the body - truly, a malignant situation.

We know from the study of propaganda and the use of projective mechanisms that a semantic inversion takes place and that the hated group themselve