Antizionism, Antisemitism and The Polarization Pendulum

The impact of antizionism and its relationship to antisemitism, however, while qualitatively well described, remains quantitatively understudied. On the individual level, antisemitism and antizionism are highly correlated. Attacks against Jews domestically in the United States tend to correlate with conflict in Israel. And antagonism to Israel is behaviorally linked to antisemitism. These studies offer important insights, but crucial gaps remain.

The NCRI and the Ruderman Foundation set out to quantitatively analyze the relationship between antizionist tropes online and the online expression of antisemitic tropes. Searching a two and half year period from January 1, 2020 to June 30, 2022, NCRI used large-scale social media data from Twitter, to analyze comments, replies, and interactions for antisemitic and antizionist tropes, key terms and slogans. For this, we collected and analyzed approximately 100 million posts and performed chronological and statistical analyses to decipher coded meanings and characterize key terms denoting antisemitic and antizionist tropes.