We find overt antisemitic attitudes are rare on the left but common on the right, particularly among young adults on the right. Even when primed with information that most U.S. Jews have favorable views toward Israel—a country disfavored by the ideological left—respondents on the left rarely support statements such as that Jews have too much power or should be boycotted.

We find evidence on the left of anti-Jewish double standards compared to Muslim Americans and Indian Americans. The right exhibits strong anti-Muslim double standards. However, in these measures too, the anti-Jewish attitudes on the left are small in magnitude compared to the anti-Jewish attitudes on the right. The right does not have an anti-Jewish double standard, but they nevertheless attribute to Jews substantially more responsibility and culpability for Israel than the left does. Indeed, young far right identifiers are seven times more likely to believe that Jewish Americans should be held to account for Israel compared to young far-left identifiers.

At the risk of sounding condescending, I am willing to forgive ordinary Jews for supporting the ‘State of Israel’s right to exist’ on the probability that they simply don’t know any better. In my experience, lower-class Jews tend to be less supportive of Zionism the more that they learn about its sordid history, in great part because the entity is built on somebody’s stolen homeland.

As for why I think that it is important for Jews to denounce the Zionist entity, but less so for Muslims to denounce predominantly Muslim governments when they commit wrongs, it is because Muslim politicians do not typically justify abhorrent actions saying that they are necessary for the good of the Muslim people. Herzlians, in contrast, always pretend that they represent Jews and claim that their atrocities are necessary for the safety of the Jewish people. Hence my ‘double standard’, as the researchers would call it.