A police officer stands at the scene, after a man was arrested following a stabbing incident in the Golders Green area, which is home to a large Jewish population, in London, Britain, April 29, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Hannah McKay

For decades, major pollsters around the world have conducted surveys on attitudes toward Jews. For decades, these surveys have produced more heat than light.

“Thinking of Jews, is your attitude generally positive or negative?” — that is the typical formulation. Time after time, pollsters found that in the West in general, and in the Anglosphere in particular, negativity toward Jews was low. Perhaps 10–15% of the Western public would openly state that they see Jews negatively.

That number may still sound high to some. But what does it actually mean in terms of the potential for rapid political mobilization? Nobody really knows. Yet much of the academic research on antisemitism — conducted in major universities and sponsored by well-meaning donors — never seriously bothered to ask the crucial questions: what does this figure mean, and is it a lot or a little?

But there is another puzzle hiding in plain sight, equally gracefully ignored. The trend in negativity toward Jews is flat. If surveys are to be believed, not much has changed in the minds of Westerners over the past decade, and possibly longer. And yet, with reports constantly highlighting a global surge in antisemitic incidents reported by Jews to the police, one is tempted to ask: who is lying? Jews who report incidents to the police and Jewish communal bodies? The police? Or the surveys?

I have an answer: the surveys are. Or rather, the surveys are asking the wrong question.

What they should be asking, and some do, only less enthusiastically than they should, is whether the Western public is negative toward Israel.

And this is emphatically not because what people feel about Israel is an objectively true measure of Jews’ status, or even Israel’s status, in the Western imagination. It is because attitudes toward Israel function as a mirror: they reveal the respondent’s own identity, the way they see themselves, and their hopes for their society. In a way, Jews and Israel can almost be forgotten. They are only needed as instruments to tease out people’s real political selves.

Have you noticed a finding that some consider “strange,” others applaud, but nobody explains convincingly? When surveys ask about attitudes to Israel and also ask about political affiliation — and when the responses are cross-classified — it turns out that nationalist circles in the West are often quite pro-Israel.

In a recent YouGov survey in Britain, for example, 39% of Reform UK supporters (the most nationalistic large British party) identified as pro-Israel, and only 13% said they were anti-Israel.

Contrast this with the currently surging far-left force, the Green Party: only 4% of Green supporters were pro-Israel, while 60% were anti-Israel. The British political old-timers — the Conservatives and Labour — show similar dynamics in essentials. While the traditionally nationalistic Conservatives lean more pro-Israel than anti-Israel, Labour leans in the opposite direction.

These findings are not new. Nor are they limited to a single pollster.

It is true that the British political map has been redrawn in recent years. The old two-party dynamic — similar to what exists in the US — no longer holds, at least for now. The Conservatives and Labour are no longer the uncontested icons of Right and Left. Instead, both look like spent forces. British politics now has clearer, more sharply defined right-wing and left-wing agendas, represented by Reform UK and the Greens. But the basic pattern — the positivity of nationalists toward Israel and the hostility of socialist circles toward it — has existed for years. It is traceable back at least a decade.

The lack of serious commentary on this is astonishing, especially given that both radical left and right-wing forces are rising across Europe. So what is happening to the nationalists? Do they really care about Israel? And should this be celebrated by those who care about Israel?

My answer, from the crossroads of demographic and historical research, is simple: British nationalists care first and foremost about themselves. They are pro-Israel because Israel is useful to their self-understanding.

The way European nationalists see Israel is simply the way they want to see themselves. Israel, in their eyes, is a Western country — close in manners and sensibilities to their own. It is a muscular Western democracy, defending its citizenry and saying a decisive “yes” to prosperity and innovation, and a decisive “no” to attempts to valorize terrorism or relativize good and evil.

While such games could be played for a while in the West, Israel did not have the luxury of indulging in them for long. And so, not by design but by historical slippage, Israel became the version of the West that Western nationalists crave but can no longer see around them. At the same time, Israel’s neighbors and insurgents are associated with anti-Western sentiments and terrorism — and, more broadly, with what is not the West. The very West of which Britain is a formative part, and which nationalists believe deserves celebration.

In a recently published feature refreshingly titled “Zionism for Everyone,” Alana Newhouse proposes a simple test of national wellbeing. Can a country maintain its demographics? Can it defend itself? Are its people happy?

In Israel’s case, the answer to all three questions is a resounding yes. Israel’s population grows naturally. Israel fights wars — not without successes, to put it mildly. And Israelis report some of the highest levels of happiness in the Western world. Zionism, Newhouse argues, is a recipe for everyone.

Is this merely wish-casting — an expression of the author’s political preferences? Not so fast. It looks like large swathes of European nationalists feel similarly. Listening to their critiques of their own societies, it is procreative confidence, pride, muscularity, and optimism that they identify as both lacking and desirable.

And what of British Jews?

Their politics is also being redesigned. Like the rest of the UK, they are increasingly interested in the newly popular right-wing and left-wing forces — Reform UK and the Green Party. Like the rest of the UK, they are less interested in the old political brands, Conservatives and Labour. Recent surveys of British Jews make this clear.

Yet British Jews are not overwhelmingly aligned with Reform UK. The extent to which nationalist pro-Israel sentiment affects Jewish voting behavior remains unclear. At the risk of sounding dramatic, this resembles unreturned love.

Put more analytically: British Jews, and Diaspora Jews more broadly, do not share a single unified vision of their host societies — or of themselves. People often speak of “Jewish interests.” Perhaps the only idea that unites both antisemites and philosemites is the belief that Jews have some collective “interest” that they coordinate politically. The difference is that antisemites describe this alleged interest in sinister terms, while philosemites relate to it with sympathy. Both miss the point.

Jewish political instincts do not boil down to guarding some uniquely defined and unambiguous “Jewish interest.” Jews are as divided over what is good for them as their host societies are. And that is perhaps the best-kept secret about Jewish politics.

So what are these competing visions of society now being contested in Britain?

One vision, promoted by British nationalists, holds that nations are natural units of human existence. Their elites, however flawed, should take care of them. Borders should be guarded. National identity should be celebrated. In that broad family of nations, Britain, Israel, and the West more generally are benevolent forces — associated with lifestyles conducive to freedom and prosperity.

An opposing vision, promoted by the far left and expressed eloquently by the leader of the British Green Party, Zac Polanski, is one in which no country has a right to exist. Similar sentiments have been voiced before. In this worldview, individuals — not nations — are the natural units of humanity. Nations are retrograde, perhaps ridiculous. End of story. Full stop.

From this menu of national versus post-national dishes, the whole of the West — majorities and minorities alike, including Jews — is now choosing. These choices dictate voting behavior and political rhetoric.

If we adopt this framework, the nationalists’ love of Israel at this particular historical moment, as well as Jewish ambivalence toward nationalist parties, becomes simultaneously explainable. Until now, both the nationalist affection for Israel and Jewish lack of enthusiasm for nationalists have seemed puzzling. But a single explanation that solves several puzzles at once is usually the strongest explanation — assuming Occam’s razor still holds.

In today’s West, broadly speaking, whoever loves the West loves Israel. The two loves are connected because Israel is perceived as the West — condensed, sharpened, and made morally legible. By extension, whoever cannot tolerate the West cannot bear Israel.

And so, as long as the West remains capable of self-love at all, Israel will remain acceptable in its books.

Dr. Daniel Staetsky is an expert in Jewish demography and statistics. He is based in Cambridge, UK.