Volume 4 No 2 - Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

2012] A METHODOLOGICAL CHALLENGE 525Jewish conspiracy (without which Israel could not carry out its policies).Therefore, they would also like to close the books on the German-Jewishpast.In comparison with the no less radical critics of Israel who do notdevelop such attitudes, they are somewhat less well informed about theIsraeli-Palestinian conflict and have somewhat less emotional closeness tothe conflict. Their peace orientation is somewhat less strongly marked, andtheir human rights orientation is somewhat less consistent. They tend somewhatmore strongly to justify limitations on human rights, show a somewhatgreater tendency to moral disengagement and are somewhat less concernedfor the victims of human rights violations (Figure 8).CONCLUSIONSBefore I conclude, I would first like to state briefly how the varioustypes of critics of Israel are distributed in our samples and within the electorateof the German political parties (Figure 9):1. The active critics of Israel in our online sample show (as expected)no pro-Israeli pattern and position themselves quite antagonisticallyin favor of the Palestinians, but they display no antisemitic pattern.2. In the online sample of active critics of Israel, the more radicalamong the critics of Israel who are not antisemitic present the patternthat appears most commonly. They are, however, quite rare inthe German population overall, and none are found in the center ofsociety (among the voters of the CDU/CSU, SPD, and FDP). If wehad made our study merely on the basis of a representative sample,we would never have been able to identify these patterns, or at leastdifferentiate them, and as a result could not become aware of thedanger of sliding from radical criticism of Israel into (some)antisemitic prejudices.3. Antisemitic criticism of Israel is typical of the neo-Nazis, but is alsofirmly anchored in the center of society (especially among CDU/CSU voters). With the Greens and the Linke party, it appears somewhatless often.4. The suspicion became stronger that with the apparent supporters ofIsrael, who tend to position themselves in a pro-Israeli peace framebut mostly do not take any position, latent antisemitism could be inplay: Besides openly antisemitic criticism of Israel, this is the onlypattern that is found with right-wing extremists (neo-Nazis), and infact more frequently than in all other parts of society. It is againGreen and Linke party voters with whom this pattern is somewhatless common.