ABSTRACT
In Western Europe the non-Jew concerned with anti semitism may belong to circles whose liberality expresses itself in a social convention of tolerance. The evaluation of antisemitic incidents and antisemitism as such is subject in various human categories. It is of some importance to arrive at a certain degree of completeness in this respect. But this judgment is influenced to such an extent by a probably unparalleled terminological confusion, that it becomes necessary to discuss first of all the origin of the word anti-Semitism. One may rely on idiom in order to qualify every unfriendly act against Jews as antisemitic, even if, by way of exception, it is a case of a simple conflict between man and man, without any collective background. One may, on the other hand, invoke the original meaning of the word in order to object to the qualification of each and any incident as antisemitic.
