Kushi didn't always mean 'nigger'

Many people were shocked or outraged today by this video of people in Tel Aviv yelling racial slurs and wishing upon people to be raped by "kushim" in Tel Aviv. The word "kushi" is often translated 'nigger,' and while in recent years is has indeed acquired something of a pejorative connotation, I believe that such a simplistic translation neither does the word and its history justice nor respects the suffer and pain that the real N-word has caused African-Americans.

‎"Kush" is the biblical name for a part of Africa, which includes most of today's Sudan and perhaps part of Ethiopia. For example, in the Book of Esther, King Ahasuerus was said to rule 127 countries from India to "kush." When I was growing up, "kushi" was a perfectly neutral term for 'black person,' more like 'negro' in the 1960s than 'nigger' ever was. However, nowadays, since more Hebrew speakers in Israel actually know black people, and there are indeed black people living in Israel who speak Hebrew (including migrant African laborers, but of course also Jewish immigrants from Ethiopia), the connotations of "kushi" have shifted towards the negative -- perhaps not to the degree of the taboo that is associated with "nigger" in the American context, but it is gradually moving in that direction.

And, of course, there are Cushitic languages, which are (along with Semitic, Egyptian, Chadic and others) part of the greater Afroasiatic language family. So indeed, the pejorative connotation is very very new.