Journal for Deradicalization

Antisemitism Now and Then: Introduction to the Special Issue

Arie W. Kruglanski — 2026-07-31

This introduction to the special issue of the Journal of Deradicalization contextualizes the alarming global surge in antisemitism, accelerating after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks and the subsequent Gaza war. We map how ancient anti-Jewish schemas have manifested across three modern ideological streams—the far-right, the far-left, and Islamist movements—and examine how social media algorithms now rapidly diffuse these narratives. Against this theoretical backdrop, we introduce six contributions that bridge macro-level societal shifts with micro-level psychological mechanisms. These articles expose critical contemporary phenomena: the societal normalization of anti-Jewish sentiment, institutional biases within international bodies, the global contagion of extremist violence, and individual psychological drivers like the quest for significance and Social Dominance Orientation. Collectively, these findings reveal that contemporary antisemitism is highly adaptive, shifting seamlessly between traditional anti-Jewish animus and target-specific geopolitical hostility toward Israel. For the scientific community, this highlights a sobering reality: deeply motivated prejudices remain highly resistant to top-down institutional interventions like official state apologies. Critically, for policy and practice within the C/PVE spaces, this demonstrates that countering mass radicalization requires moving beyond generic messaging to implement target-specific risk assessments that analytically separate anti-Israel sentiment from traditional anti-Jewish tropes while aggressively disrupting the societal normalization of extremist narratives.

Acknowledgements:

The research was supported by the Minerva Research Initiative, Department of Defense Grant No N000 14-21-275485. Any opinions, findings, or recommendations expressed in this paper are those of the authors alone and do not reflect the views of the Office of Naval Research, the Department of the Navy, or the Department of Defense.

After 10/7: Normalization of Antisemitism in the West

David R. Mandel — 2026-07-31

The October 7, 2023, terrorist attacks against Israel (10/7) represented the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Rather than triggering sympathy for the victims, most of whom were Jewish, 10/7 sparked a rise in antisemitism in Western diasporas. This rise cannot be satisfactorily explained in terms of radicalization. Radicalization is an increase in extremist attitudes and behavioral intentions relative to default societal norms. Thus, the radicalization hypothesis implies that the output of radicalization (in this case, antisemitism) is not normalized. This is unambiguously contradicted by data on incidence rates of antisemitism before and after 10/7 and other documentary evidence. Such findings indicate that antisemitism was normalizing before 10/7, and it is that normalization which set the preconditions for its explosive rise witnessed after 10/7. Misattributing the current wave of antisemitism principally to radicalization endangers Jews because such explanations can inadvertently minimize the breadth and severity of the problem.

Does the UN Exhibit an Anti-Israel Bias? A Critical Analysis of UNRWA’s Responses to Israeli Allegations After October 7

André Lajst — 2026-07-31

Following the October 7 massacre, Israel found itself entangled in a series of diplomatic confrontations with the United Nations. Central to this tension are allegations that employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) have connections to Hamas and may have participated in the attacks. The perception of anti-Israel bias—particularly within the voting patterns of UN General Assembly member states—has been widely studied, often through the framework of what has been termed the “new antisemitism.” Building on this body of scholarship, this article investigates whether the UN’s alleged anti-Israel posture extends beyond member-state voting behavior and reflects a deeper institutional pattern. Adopting Sharansky’s (2004) 3D framework as an explicit analytical lens and testing it against competing hypotheses rooted in operational constraints, legal due-process norms, and General Assembly dynamics, the article offers a structured qualitative content analysis of UNRWA’s official responses to Israeli accusations, supplemented by a computational linguistic analysis of the agency’s rhetorical patterns. The findings suggest that while the alternative hypotheses account for significant aspects of UNRWA’s response behavior, a cumulative pattern of differential treatment toward Israel persists—including a measurable asymmetry in the use of assertive versus hedging language—that is most consistently explained by the double standards dimension of the “new antisemitism” framework.

Antisemitism as Accelerator: Contagion and Validation Effects Driving the Post-October 7 Surge in Global Extremist Violence

Eoin B. Healy — 2026-07-31

This paper investigates the significant surge in global terrorism following the October 7, 2023, attacks, analyzing its implications for modern deradicalization. Leveraging incident-level data from the Global Terrorism Trends and Analysis Center’s Record of Incident Database (GRID), the study employs negative binomial models to quantify changes in terrorism frequency over a 1,097-day period. Statistical analysis reveals a marked escalation: global daily terrorism rates increased by 44 percent, while Western Europe experienced a fivefold increase in monthly incidents. The paper argues that these patterns expose two compounding radicalization mechanisms: the contagion effect and the validation effect. Crucially, the initial shock of the attack, combined with the overwhelming asymmetric Israeli response in Gaza, acted as a dual catalyst, simultaneously shattering established security paradigms and providing a continuous stream of grievance-based content that validated extremist worldviews. Central to these dynamics is antisemitism, which functions as a potent ideological accelerator. Understanding this nexus is vital for developing agile, theme-specific deradicalization strategies that address the accelerated mobilization patterns and the structural role of antisemitism within contemporary extremist ecosystems.

Antisemitism and Perception of Hamas: The Role of Significance Quest

Molly Ellenberg — 2026-07-31

The present study examines antisemitism as a response to an unmet desire for personal significance (i.e., wanting to be more respected, important, and socially valued). This was tested in a two-wave study of Americans’ perceptions of the Israel–Hamas war conducted six and fifteen months after Israel’s initial ground operation in Gaza following the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023. Results indicated that the quest for significance predicted endorsement of two conceptually distinct forms of antisemitism: beliefs concerning disproportionate Jewish power and beliefs portraying Jewish people as adversaries of Christianity. In turn, power-based antisemitism independently predicted perceptions of Hamas as motivated by justice, suggesting that the quest for significance may shape perceptions of the Israel–Hamas conflict partly through antisemitic narratives. These findings are consistent with the possibility that individuals experiencing unmet significance needs may be predisposed to interpret Hamas as resisting a disproportionately powerful adversary.

From Conspiracy Beliefs to Radical Action: Antisemitic Narratives, Anti-Israel Attitudes, and Pathways to Political Radicalization

Sophia Moskalenko — 2026-07-31

The October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza were followed by the rapid spread of conspiracy narratives. The present exploratory research examines how belief in newly emerging conspiracy theories is associated with support for radical political action, and whether these associations operate through antisemitic attitudes toward Jews or political hostility toward Israel. Across two U.S. studies conducted in 2024 (N = 1,240) and 2025 (N = 567), participants evaluated three then-widely-circulating conspiracies: claims that Israel deliberately bombed Al-Ahli hospital; that evidence of Hamas atrocities was staged; and that the war was engineered to advance a “Great Replacement.” Results revealed that endorsement of conspiracy narratives was consistently associated with stronger support for illegal or violent political action. However, these relationships were driven primarily by negative attitudes toward Israel rather than by generalized antisemitic attitudes toward Jews. These findings refine theories of antisemitism and radicalization by identifying a target-specific pathway in which conspiratorial narratives mobilize grievance-based radicalization without necessarily increasing anti-Jewish animus. The results underscore the importance of analytically distinguishing antisemitism from anti-Israel sentiment and highlight conspiracy beliefs as a key psychological mechanism linking political conflict to support for radical action.

Acknowledgement

Combating Antisemitism in the Netherlands: Group Apology as an Intervention?

Liesbeth Mann — 2026-07-31

The Netherlands’ history with antisemitism is complex. Active collaboration with the Nazis during the Holocaust and mistreatment of Jewish survivors after the war are issues the country still struggles to confront. Recently, official apologies have been offered for this painful past. One aim of group apologies is to promote intergroup reconciliation. However, little is known about how such apologies are received by the broader population in a country and how it may affect the public’s attitudes toward the victim group. One possible outcome of a group apology is a more positive view and reduced stereotyping of the victim group among the general public. This study (N = 471) experimentally tested this idea in the context of an apology for the Dutch collaboration with the Nazis during the Holocaust. It was predicted that the apology would reduce antisemitic stereotypes by increasing perceptions that Jewish Dutch people are part of the Dutch ingroup and by reducing conflation of Jewish Dutch people with Israel and Israeli policy. Additionally, relations between antisemitic stereotypes, apology-related measures, social dominance orientation (SDO), and political ideology were explored. Findings showed that, although the means differed in the expected direction, these effects were not statistically significant, thus the hypotheses could not be confirmed. Results further showed that people higher on SDO and right-wing ideology endorsed antisemitic stereotypes more strongly, and people who endorsed antisemitic stereotypes more strongly were less in favor of apology, reparations, and Holocaust commemoration. These results are discussed in light of policy recommendations regarding intervention strategies to combat antisemitism.