The Left, the Right, Christians, Muslims and Detractors of Israel: Who is Antisemitic in Great Britain in the Early 21st Century?

Abstract

The Left, the Right, Christians and Muslims—are they antisemitic and how do they compare? In what way are anti-Israelism and other political convictions related to the contemporary antisemitism? This paper provides numerical answers to these questions in the context of Great Britain—a low-antisemitism country.

Appendices

Appendix 1

Attitudes to Israel and Israelis Expressed by the British Population (%’s)

General opinion of Israel	Very/somewhat unfavourable	Very/somewhat favourable, neutral or ‘Don’t Know’	Total
Tell me if you have a very favourable, somewhat favourable, somewhat unfavourable, or very unfavourable opinion of (Israel)	33.3	66.7	100.0

To what extent you agree or disagree	Strongly agree/Tend to agree	Strongly disagree/Tend to disagree, neutral or ‘Don’t Know’	Total
Israel is committing mass murder in Palestine	23.8	76.2	100.0
Israel is deliberately trying to wipe out the Palestinian population	23.4	76.6	100.0
Israel is an apartheid state	21.0	79.0	100.0
The interest of Israelis are at odds with the interests of the rest of the world	18.2	81.8	100.0
Israel has too much control over global affairs	17.2	82.8	100.0
Israel exploits Holocaust victimhood for its own purposes	13.6	86.4	100.0
Israel is the cause of all the troubles in the Middle East	10.5	89.5	100.0
People should boycott Israeli goods and products	9.8	90.2	100.0

1. Reliability analysis of the nine variables above revealed a Chronbach’s alpha value of 0.8: all items measure the same latent construct

Appendix 2

Attitude	Please state whether you personally think it could ever be justified in Britain
	Always justified (code 3)	Sometimes justified (code 2)	Rarely justified (code 1)	Never justified (code 0)	Don’t know	Prefer not to say	Total
Using violence to fight against things that are very unfair	1.4	15.5	25.3	48.9	7.5	1.5	100.0
People using violence to defend their values, beliefs, or religion	1.2	10.9	22.6	56.4	7.4	1.4	100.0
Supporting groups that use violence to fight against injustice	1.0	10.9	22.0	56.5	8.1	1.5	100.0
Fighting with violence, attacks or kidnappings for a better world	1.2	7.0	17.0	65.4	8.0	1.4	100.0

Chronbach’s alpha value of the four items is 0.89, showing high reliability, i.e. all items measure the same latent construct, which opens a possibility of creating a single composite variable. Two such variables were created: first, a continuous variable was created by summing across responses to all four items. Due to the nature of the coding, this variable took value 0 when the response to all four items was “Never justified” and value 12 when the response to all four items was “Always justified”. Thus, 0 and 12 are the poles of the tendency to justify violence in this analysis (the violent extremist attitudes scale, or VEAS scale). Second, for the use in regression analysis, a categorical variable capturing susceptibility to violent extremism was created on the basis of the continuous variable, and that consists of three categories: category 0 (N = 1678; 45%)—those who do not justify violence under any circumstances, category 1 (N = 1616, 44%)—those who possess values in the range of 1–5 on VEAS scale and category 2 (N = 408, 11%)—those who possess values in the range of 6–12 on VEAS scale.