Methodology

What this is

This database documents the genealogy of anti-Jewish accusations: how claims circulating today descend, through documented transformations, from older tropes — from medieval antijudaism (deicide, blood libel, well-poisoning) through racial antisemitism (the Protocols, finance and media myths) to antizionism, in which, as Izabella Tabarovsky's research on Soviet “Zionology” shows, the same conspiracy structures were recycled with “Zionist” substituted for “Jew.” Every entry states the claim, gives historical context, provides an evidence-based debunking, and links each genealogical edge with a note explaining the documented transformation. Every entry carries citations to verifiable sources.

What this is not

Criticism of Israeli government policy is not antisemitic, and this database never claims otherwise. The IHRA working definition itself states that criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic. Documenting that a rhetorical frame has a lineage in propaganda does not settle the underlying policy or legal debates — which is why entries are classified honestly:

• FabricationDemonstrably invented: a forged document, a fictitious event, an accusation refuted by direct evidence.
• Conspiracy theoryAn unfalsifiable narrative of hidden coordinated Jewish power, contradicted by the documented record.
• LibelA defamatory accusation against Jews as a group, historically used to incite violence.
• Contested frameA framing whose rhetorical genealogy in anti-Jewish propaganda is documented, while underlying policy questions remain legitimately debated.

For contested-frame entries (apartheid, genocide, settler-colonialism, pinkwashing), the entry documents what is factually wrong or rhetorically inherited in the maximalist version of the claim, while explicitly acknowledging the zone of legitimate scholarly, legal, and political debate — including human-rights reports and court proceedings that reasonable people argue about in good faith.

Key scholarship

The genealogical method follows the scholarly literature: David Nirenberg's Anti-Judaism, Norman Cohn's Warrant for Genocide, Robert Wistrich's The Longest Hatred and From Ambivalence to Betrayal, Paul Hanebrink's A Specter Haunting Europe, Jeffrey Herf's archival work, Magda Teter's Blood Libel, Izabella Tabarovsky's studies of Soviet antizionism (“Soviet Anti-Zionism and Contemporary Left Antisemitism,” Fathom 2019; “Demonization Blueprints,” Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism 2022), David Hirsh's Contemporary Left Antisemitism, Lesley Klaff on Holocaust inversion, and Adam Louis-Klein's anthropological work on antizionism and the denial of Jewish peoplehood — alongside institutional documentation from USHMM, Yad Vashem, the ADL, the AJC, and the Community Security Trust.

Data & contributions

The database is a set of structured JSON files — one node per claim, with typed genealogical edges and citations — designed to grow. Corrections and new entries with verifiable sources are welcome.