There’s a term I see everywhere misused: antisemitism. “Semitic” is defined as “relating to or denoting a family of languages that includes Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic and certain ancient languages such as Phoenician and Akkadian, constituting the main subgroup of the Afro-Asiatic family.” Yet “antisemitic” has come to refer only to prejudice against Jewish people. Perhaps returning to its original meaning might help us see Jews and Arabs as cousins in one group and that prejudice against Arabic-speaking people is also antisemitic.

Gordon Houser, North Newton, Kan.