Do two-thirds of New Zealanders hold antisemitic views?
That’s the suggestion from a new survey by the New Zealand Jewish Council (NZJC), which canvassed 1017 online respondents’ views on 18 supposedly antisemitic statements. The study also evaluated knowledge of the Holocaust and general sentiment towards views.
At first, it’s hard to square the headline result – that “63 percent of New Zealanders surveyed agree with at least one antisemitic view” – with another key finding that people were more favourable of Jews than Buddhists or Muslims. Asked to rate their “feelings of warmth” towards Jews on a scale from 0 to 100, respondents’ median choice was 75.
“Warmth toward Muslims is significantly lower than warmth scores toward each of the other ethnic/religious groups,” the report found and the median ranking for Muslims was just 66.
Part of the issue is explained in the 2017 British survey that the NZJC study is largely modelled on: There is a distinction between antisemites and antisemitism. This survey estimated that 2.4 percent of British adults expressed multiple antisemitic views “readily and confidently” and another 3 percent held fewer – but still multiple – antisemitic attitudes with less certainty.
“This relatively small group of about 5 percent of the general population can justifiably be described as antisemites: people who hold a wide range of negative attitudes towards Jews. However, because antisemitic ideas circulate in society well beyond this group, there is a much larger number of people who believe a small number of negative ideas about Jews, but who may not be consciously hostile or prejudiced towards them,” the British report found.
That much larger group in Britain, who subscribed to at least one antisemitic view, was found to be 30 percent of the population.
That’s half the rate reported by the NZJC survey – so do we really have double the antisemitism as the UK does?
Not exactly.
The other reason for the seeming clash between favourable views of Jews and the holding of antisemitic attitudes is that the NZJC survey has conflated anti-Jewish sentiment with anti-Israel sentiment. Of the 18 supposedly antisemitic statements presented to respondents, only eight were considered examples of “classical antisemitism”. Seven involved “anti-Israel antisemitism” and another three were considered “other antisemitism”.
Most of the statements were pulled from a range of past studies of antisemitism, including the 2017 British survey. Three statements, which were that “Jews brought the Holocaust on themselves,” “All societies should fear Zionists” and “Jews have White privilege” were devised by the NZJC to “reflect gross Holocaust denial, and forms of antisemitism that is associated with conspiracies and/or identity politic extremists, respectively”.
Five of the seven anti-Israel statements were taken from the 2017 British survey. But that survey didn’t consider them to necessarily be antisemitic – it polled them as “anti-Israel statements” and didn’t include agreement with them in its headline figures for antisemitic attitudes. When you break down the numbers, 47 percent of British adults agreed with at least one of the anti-Israel statements – identical to the percentage of New Zealanders who agreed with one of them.
At least some of these statements have relatively little to do with antisemitism. Whether or not someone believes that Israel is “the only real democracy in the Middle East” tells us very little about their views on Jews. If they believe Israel is not a democracy, they are misinformed, not antisemitic. If they believe other countries in the region are also democracies, that has nothing to do with Jews whatsoever.
One controversial statement polled by the NZJC was that “people should boycott Israeli goods and products”. Just 11 percent of respondents agreed with that, but is it inherently antisemitic? After all, a similar proportion of American Jews (10 percent) support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, according to a 2020 survey.
By conflating antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment, the NZJC study loses the ability to report authoritative findings about antisemitism alone. Certainly, there are anti-Israel beliefs and attitudes that are also antisemitic. Some of these are rightly included in the NZJC survey – such as “Israeli government policies are similar to those of the Nazi regime” or “Jews in NZ are more loyal to Israel than to New Zealand”.
But while the survey itself notes that “legitimate criticism of Israeli policy is certainly not antisemitism”, it then includes beliefs that are held by a sizeable proportion of Jews and which are not cut-and-dry antisemitism. This weakens the overall findings of the survey.
When we tease out the anti-Israel statements, we find 41 percent of respondents held at least one of the “classical antisemitism” views – much closer to the 30 percent found in Britain.
Understanding the presence of antisemitism in New Zealand is a critical task. Clearly, experiences of antisemitism are on the rise. The NZJC received more reports of antisemitic incidents in the first 11 months of 2021 than in any calendar year and this excluded the cacophony of Jew hatred that can be found online. I myself have been subject to antisemitic abuse and death threats for more than three years as a result of my reporting on violent extremism.
Anti-Israel sentiment makes up part of this. Understanding the extent of anti-Israel views is also useful, but the two shouldn’t be conflated.
The study also missed an opportunity to understand the impact of antisemitism. Most of the 41 percent of New Zealanders who hold an antisemitic view are, essentially, harmless. Perhaps better education or engagement could correct most of these misconceptions. Regardless, what matters more than the percentage of people who have antisemitic attitudes is the effect of this – the harm it causes – on the Jewish community.
Even more interesting than understanding the spread of antisemitism in New Zealand would be polling of the experiences of New Zealand Jews. How often do they encounter antisemitism in person or online? What form does it take, from vandalism to threats to physical violence?
The last such study, conducted in 2019, found the percentage of Jewish New Zealanders who thought antisemitism was a “pretty big” or “very big” problem rose from 16 to 44 percent. We’ve since seen the Covid-19 pandemic and the further rise of far-right violent extremism. The Parliament occupation – replete with antisemitic and Holocaust imagery – highlighted the fusion of online antisemitism with the growing anti-vax movement.
That two in five New Zealanders hold at least one antisemitic belief is useful to understand in this context. But there’s more to be done if we want to glean the impact of antisemitism on New Zealand’s Jewish community.
