Policies or Prejudices? An Analysis of Antisemitic and Anti-Israel Views on Social Media and Social Surveys
Binstok, N; Gould, ED; Kaplan, T
Date: 23 February 2024
Article
Journal
Journal of the European Economic Association
Publisher
Oxford University Press / European Economic Association
Publisher DOI
Abstract
This paper examines the extent to which personal biases affect political views, in
the context of how antisemitism influences opinions about Israel. Two empirical analyses are
conducted. The first one analyzes social media chatter about Jews and Israel in the UK,
revealing a strong, positive relationship between negative chatter ...
This paper examines the extent to which personal biases affect political views, in
the context of how antisemitism influences opinions about Israel. Two empirical analyses are
conducted. The first one analyzes social media chatter about Jews and Israel in the UK,
revealing a strong, positive relationship between negative chatter about both of them at the
daily-location level. In order to establish causality, social media chatter about a “Jewish”
football team in the English Premier League (Tottenham) is used as an instrument for negative
expressions about Jewish people to explain negativity towards Israel. The second empirical
analysis uses the 2016 wave of the German Social Survey, which reveals a strong and robust
relationship between several commonly used measures of antisemitic beliefs and holding anti-
Israel views. A causal interpretation of this finding is supported by an IV analysis motivated
by Voigtländer and Voth (2015) who show that Nazi indoctrination during the WWII period
had a lifelong impact on antisemitic views. In both analyses, the IV estimates are considerably
larger than OLS coefficients.
Economics
Faculty of Environment, Science and Economy
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