Out of such pseudoscience sprang the notion that there exists some group of peoples, including Arabs and Jews, who are all “Semites.” The idea has no historical or biological basis; it’s purely a cultural construction. The notion, advanced in recent years by foes of the Jews that they cannot be anti-Semitic because they support the Arabs, who are also Semites, is thus doubly absurd: First, the notion of a “Semite” is itself a racist invention of 19^th-century Europe. Second, the term anti-Semitism has been used overwhelmingly in the sense that Wilhelm Marr coined it in 1879, to apply only to the Jews. At any rate, it is preposterous to argue that hating Jews, even when accompanied by a fondness for Arabs, is anything less than racist.