Why Do People Discriminate against Jews? cannot be filed away as yet another descriptive attempt to broadly explain antisemitism—what Robert Wistrich coined as “The Longest Hatred”—in its contemporary forms. Instead, Jonathan Fox and Lev Topor provide a desperately needed, scientifically grounded, data-driven approach to explaining why discrimination targeting Jews varies considerably from country to country. The authors justify their focus on Jews through empirics, noting that Jews suffer more societal-based discrimination in countries where they are present than other religious minorities according to the Religion and State-Minorities Round 3 (RASM3) dataset (pp. 24–25).

Using the RASM3 data examining government-based religious discrimination (GRD) and societal-based religious discrimination (SRD), the three main substantive chapters of the book each focus on a single critical factor of Jewish discrimination: (1) the impact of religious ideologies and beliefs (chap. 3, pp. 64–90); (2) the role of anti-Israel attitudes and behavior (chap. 4, pp. 91–114); and (3) the influence of belief in conspiracies of Jewish power (chap. 5, pp. 115–41). The authors also include a valuable case study examining Jewish discrimination in Great Britain (chap. 6, pp. 142–63), which helps pragmatically apply some of their most important findings. Although the examination of the three aforementioned factors of interest are not exhaustive in explaining variation in Jewish discrimination (nor do the authors suggest they do), together they provide compulsory empirical analysis given the data and methodological tools available to study the phenomenon, despite some concerns surrounding variable measurement.

In chapter 3, Fox and Topor test established positions that religious identification and practice, along with governmental support for religion, should result in increased discrimination targeting Jewish minorities. Their analysis shows what can only be described as largely counterintuitive findings: religiosity has no causal relationship with GRD and decreases levels of SRD targeting Jewish minorities (pp. 86–87). The authors ground their explanation for this outcome in the work of Fox (Political Secularism, Religion, and the State, 2015), seeing it as part of a contemporary alignment and alliance between those identifying as religious to combat a growing threat of secularism. Further, they contend that this alliance, predicated on the notion that “more extreme forms of secularism target religious practices in general,” will not be permanent, instead arguing it “will likely only remain in place as long as the secular threat is present and capable” (p. 88).

Although Fox and Topor note that their claim of an interreligious alliance likely requires more complex modeling given expectations about highly religious countries (p. 88), examining this alliance’s role in diminishing experienced Jewish SRD could be solidified through additional data-driven analysis and small case studies. For example, although understandably limited by sample size and the varied inclusion of countries in World Value Survey (WVS) waves used to measure religious importance and attendance, it would be beneficial for future research to more clearly identify and operationalize the secular threat and its consequent effect on SRD across the sample. One way to do this would be through fixed-effects analysis, looking specifically at variation in religiosity measures and changes in those identifying as atheist across time.

The main aim of chapter 4 is to examine anti-Zionist and anti-Israel behavior by evaluating both a country’s UN General Assembly voting history on Israel-related resolutions and country-level sentiments toward Israel and Palestine. Fox and Topor create a novel measure to investigate Israel-related UN voting by assigning a country two scores based on its voting behavior, examining both its record of pro-Israel and anti-Israel votes (pp. 111, 194). This new measure, however, is undertheorized and underjustified by the authors. Their related findings are “perplexing,” particularly regarding SRD, which shows that increases in anti-Israel UN voting result in diminished Jewish SRD (p. 112). They also find that more anti-Israel votes increase GRD targeting Jews, whereas pro-Israel votes have no influence on Jewish GRD (p. 112). Using the ADL Global 100 polling data to determine anti-Israel and pro-Palestine views in a country, they find that the percentage of a country’s population that views Israel unfavorably and the percentage that views Palestine favorably only result in more GRD targeting Jews. Weaving these findings together, Fox and Topor argue, citing a modified version of securitization theory, that “elite speech acts to both mobilize anti-Zionist attitudes and justify the discriminatory policies of the government” (p. 113).

Although the authors weave a sound theoretical narrative to explain their anti-Israel/anti-Zionism findings, there are identifiable concerns related to several variable measures that underscore their explanation. First, at the level of theory, do collective Israel-related General Assembly votes constitute an elite action that will affect societal views of Israel and Palestine within a country? One could argue that it is likely that even those most attuned to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in their respective countries would be unfamiliar with the proportion (and variation in the proportion) of their country’s UN votes across time. Further, why would elites justify GRD through a measure their constituents are likely to care little about? Looking to the ADL Global 100 polling data (https://global100.adl.org/map), it seems fair to probe why only unfavorable attitudes toward Israel and favorable attitudes toward Palestine were included in the analysis. For example, according to the ADL data for France in 2014 cited by the authors, 17% had an unfavorable opinion of Israel, whereas 59% had a favorable view of Palestine. However, 17% of French participants also had an unfavorable opinion of Palestine, and 60% had a favorable opinion of Israel. The inclusion of this additional data provides a considerably more complete picture of a country’s attitudes toward Israel and Palestine. Future research confirming and building on this book’s findings may also consider using other ADL data, such as the proportion of a country’s population that agrees with the statement, “The actions Israel takes generally give you a worse opinion of Jews.” This may be a more precise measure of anti-Zionist attitudes that could directly affect Jewish discrimination than general favorability and unfavorability measures toward Israel and Palestine.

Although conspiracy theories constructed about Jews can include or be motivated by religion and anti-Zionism, Fox and Topor rightfully devote an entire chapter to their discussion and analysis (chap. 5. pp. 115–41). Again using the ADL Global 100 polling data, they find that agreeing that “Jews are responsible for most of the world’s wars” (p. 136) and beliefs about disproportionate Jewish power and control are critical to explaining both GRD and SRD targeting Jews. High levels of societal belief in conspiracy “is also the only factor tested in this entire study that consistently predicts higher SRD against Jews with statistical significance” (p. 139). The authors appropriately highlight this finding as among the most critical of their analyses, noting that scholars can infer that once widespread belief about a group reaches a conspiratorial threshold, consequent discrimination is going to increase in quantity and severity (p. 167).

Fox and Topor have done what many scholars of antisemitism, modern Jewish studies, and religious discrimination may have thought impossible. By focusing on variation in discrimination and leaving antisemitism as an explanatory or motivational factor, they successfully generalize the treatment of Jewish populations, making their findings valuable for scholars of antisemitism and general discrimination. Consequently, this book, although focused on Jews, broadly and substantially contributes to our knowledge of religious and secular causes of discrimination, securitization theory, stigmatization theory, and the tangible consequences of conspiracy theories. Of additional importance, Fox and Topor provide credibility to empirical approaches that use Jews and antisemitism as cases to examine broader prejudice within the social sciences (e.g., A. Feinberg, “Explaining Ethnoreligious Minority Targeting: Variation in US Anti-Semitic Incidents,” Perspectives on Politics, 18 [3], 2020), underscoring that although “the causes of discrimination against Jews are likely unique, they are not so unique that there is an absence of parallels and basis for comparison” (p. 174). For all these reasons, Why Do People Discriminate against Jews? is an important read for any scholar studying Jews, religious discrimination, and the contemporary treatment of marginalized groups.