Religious Anti-Semitism

This chapter examines and compares theories in the general political science literature to those in the anti-Semitism literature which posit that religion is a cause of discrimination against Jews. While the perspectives of the two literatures are different, the predictions and arguments are similar and predict religion to cause more discrimination. The authors use data on government support for religion from the Religion and State data set to test whether countries which are closely associated with a single religion discriminate against Jews more and confirm that this is the case. However, when using data from the World Values Survey measuring religiosity, the authors find that in countries where people are more religious there is less discrimination against Jews. This is an unprecedented finding. The authors theorize that this is due to the influence of secularism where religious Christians see religious Jews as potential allies in the fight against the common threat of secularism.

The British Example

In order to place the empirical findings of this study into a more concrete context, in this chapter the authors examine the United Kingdom as a case study, using traditional comparative politics qualitative methodology. They examine the history of anti-Semitism and discrimination against Jews in the United Kingdom, focusing on the religious, anti-Zionist, and conspiracy-based explanations in this context. They demonstrate that it is plausible to argue that all three of these motives have caused discrimination against Jews in the United Kingdom. The chapter also discusses briefly the allegations of anti-Semitism by the Labour Party in recent years, specifically under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn.

Anti-Zionism and Anti-Israel Behavior and Sentiment

This chapter examines whether anti-Israel sentiment and behavior predicts discrimination against Jews. It discusses the history of anti-Zionism and demonstrates that at least in some instances it can instigate discrimination against Jews. The authors also discuss general social science theories which address whether the behavior or existence of a country can instigate discrimination against a diaspora from that country. They focus on securitization theory, which has been used to explain levels of discrimination against Muslims, as well as other prominent theories drawn from a wide variety political science and social science literatures. The authors argue that both the anti-Semitism and the general political science literatures can benefit greatly from this cross-fertilization and suggest some theoretical innovations based on this discussion. Empirically they find that both anti-Israel sentiment and anti-Israel voting by governments in the UN General Assembly predict government-based discrimination against Jews. However, these do not predict societal discrimination against Jews.

Introduction

This chapter introduces and summarizes the book. It addresses four questions: First, what is this book about? Most studies focus on anti-Semitism. This book focuses on the causes of discriminating against Jews. The authors’ findings are valid whether or not this discrimination or its causes are labeled as anti-Semitic. Second, what are the patterns of discrimination against Jews? The authors address this in more detail in Chapter 2. Third, what are the causes of discrimination against Jews? This book focuses on three prominent theories from the anti-Semitism literature: religious motivations, anti-Israel motivations, and belief in conspiracy theories of Jewish power. Fourth, why is this study unique? This is the first book to examine the causes of discrimination against Jews using cross-national data from 76 countries. It also provides a comprehensive comparison of the predictions found in the anti-Semitism and social science academic literatures focusing on theories which explain the causes of discrimination.

Conclusions

This chapter looks at the broader picture. It reviews from a broader perspective what the anti-Semitism and general social science literatures can learn from each other. It also discusses how this study impacts the understanding of (1) the causes of discrimination against Jews, (2) the causes of discrimination against religious minorities, (3) the causes of discrimination in general, and (4) how all of this impacts on the understanding of anti-Semitism. One interesting finding in this chapter is that conspiracy theories of Jewish power predict not only discrimination against Jews, but also discrimination against other religious minorities.

Conspiracy Theories

Conspiracy theories of Jewish power and world domination as well as blood libels have been persistently present for over a millennium. This chapter briefly discusses the history and nature of these conspiracy theories and evaluates them using a developing social science literature on conspiracy theories. Empirically the authors test the relationship between belief in conspiracy theories and discrimination against Jews using data from the ADL 100 survey. Their results show an extremely strong and significant correlation between belief in conspiracy theories about Jews and both societal and governmental discrimination against Jews. Conspiracy theories provide the strongest empirical predictor of discrimination against Jews among all indicators used on this study. Interestingly, to the authors’ knowledge, there has been no previous cross-country test as to whether belief in conspiracy theories causes real-world discrimination against the objects of those conspiracy theories (in this case, Jews).

Patterns of Discrimination

This chapter discusses what the authors mean by discrimination and how they measure it. It also provides a detailed discussion and analysis of the levels of discrimination against Jews compared to other religious minorities. While government-based discrimination against Jews is below average, societal discrimination is higher than against other religious minorities. However, levels of discrimination against Jews are not uniform and range from none in a few countries to extremely high levels in others. From an empirical standpoint this is beneficial since this variation allows for the cross-country testing of the causes of religious discrimination in the subsequent chapters. This basic non-causal analysis reveals some interesting patterns, including that a good portion of government-based discrimination against Jews in the West is caused by secular-based opposition to practices common to both Jews and Muslims, including infant circumcision and ritual slaughter of meat (kosher and halal meat).