For years, European leaders have warned that anti-Zionism is often just antisemitism in disguise. Now, a groundbreaking new study from Sweden has delivered the empirical proof.
A first-of-its-kind survey experiment led by Professor Christer Mattsson of the University of Gothenburg has found a measurable, widespread correlation between anti-Zionist rhetoric and classic antisemitic beliefs — an overlap long acknowledged by Jewish communities but downplayed by traditional antisemitism indexes.
The study, conducted across Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States with roughly 9,000 interviewees, replaced the word “Jews” with “Zionists” in common antisemitic tropes. The results were stark. Only 5–10% of respondents endorsed statements such as “Jews are deceitful” or “Jews control the media.” But when the same statements targeted “Zionists,” public agreement skyrocketed to near-neutral — meaning just as many people agreed as disagreed.
In other words, antisemitic sentiment suddenly became socially acceptable when rebranded as anti-Zionism.
“This study shows contemporary antisemitism expresses itself through anti-Zionism,” Mattsson told Jewish News Syndicate (JNS). “It preserves the same conspiratorial content.”
The findings challenge years of official reporting. Countries celebrated as having “low antisemitism” — such as Sweden and the Netherlands — consistently show high levels of antisemitic harassment in Jewish community surveys. Sweden, for example, ranked as the least antisemitic country in the ADL’s 2025 Global 100 poll, scoring just 5%, yet 35% of Swedish Jews reported experiencing antisemitic harassment in the previous year.
Mattsson says the discrepancy can no longer be explained away as isolated extremism or immigrant-community concentration. “The data doesn’t add up,” he said. “There is something wrong with the measurement.”
Because antisemitism has “migrated” from explicit hatred of Jews to accusations against “Zionists,” earlier surveys simply failed to capture the phenomenon.
Rabbi Menachem Margolin, head of the European Jewish Association, said the study confirms what Jewish communities have observed for years: anti-Zionism is being used as a “socially permissible” cover for antisemitism.
“For a Jew walking the streets of Europe today, this is not about statistics — it is daily reality,” Margolin said. “Leaders must wake up and confront this despicable phenomenon.”
The Swedish findings directly challenge previous studies that suggested only a weak or inconsistent connection between anti-Israel attitudes and antisemitism. By swapping “Jew” for “Zionist,” Mattsson’s study uncovered what earlier researchers missed.
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6 Responses
For those who think anti-Zionism is not motivated by anti-semitsm replace “Zionist” with “Orthodox Jew” and see how you would feel. Take some of the comments on the a typical New York Times anti “Hasidim” article where many posters (some who are Jewish) insist they aren’t anti-semites they only have issues with “Hasidim” It is the same idea
“The results were stark. Only 5–10% of respondents endorsed statements such as “Jews are deceitful” or “Jews control the media.” But when the same statements targeted “Zionists,” public agreement skyrocketed to near-neutral — meaning just as many people agreed as disagreed.”
Substituting the word “Jew” for (its actual opposite of) “Zionist”, should obviously produce a dramatically different result.
That anti-Zionism does not at all indicate that anyone who hates Zionists also necessarily hates Jews. In fact, the above indicates the exact opposite.
Hakatan: of course it is possible to be anti Zionist and not anti semitic but in real life 95+ percent of those who claim to be anti zionists are simply anti semites in disguise. They just use the word Zionist instead of Jew. I will give you an example I personally experienced 5 years ago or so. I was in an elevator in a public building in manhattan. A pushy woman plowed her way out of the elevator. The black woman standing next to me said “you Zionist.” In almost all cases other than a few baalei tshuva who call themselves neturei karta the anti Zionism is just ordinary anti semitism.
micro,
You should be banned from posting anything until you call out your NK (Nazi Kapo) buddies for their vile behavior against the Gadol Hador.
You tried to dance around this by writing, “there is no need to condemn the obvious”. Yet you also wrote “we don’t run our lives based on what people claim gedolim say. We ask our rav or rebbi who has a real mesorah from a real rebbi…going all the way back”.
What you really meant is that you, just like NK, don’t hold of him as Gadol Hador. Until you explicitly acknowledge their unacceptable public desecration, you have no right to criticize anyone!
Hakatan again I think you are misunderstanding. When you see Jews being beaten all over Europe, everywhere, in Australia, really everywhere in the world, when you see Jewish cemeteries to face and synagogues and Jewish schools, attacked the attackers have no idea if the people are Israeli or not. They have no idea if they are Zionist or not Zionist . All they know is they are Jews.
You keep supporting people who want to kill Jews. You keep supporting NK who are allied with the very Muslims that murder our people. And you think if only we did not have a Jewish state all the antisemitism would go away. There was at least as much if not more antisemitism before 1948 as compared to after. I don’t know if you heard about the holocaust, but that actually predated the state of Israel. I don’t know if you’ve heard about programs but those actually predated the state of Israel. The state of Israel has nothing to do with antisemitism.
People who support Jew killers like NK have no place in the Jewish community. You cannot support murdering Jews and say you are a good Jew. Those two things are mutually exclusive.
I get that you don’t love Jews that don’t practice the way that you practice. But most of our brethren are ignorant and Judaism. The way to bring King Moshiach is not by supporting people like Arafat like the NK do. It’s by loving your fellow Jew.
Antisemitism far predates the Jewish state.
keith,
micro worships the false god of anti-Zionism and has only one commandment so he doesn’t care about bringing Mashiach.