Antisemitism in Saudi Arabia

The modern Saudi account is chiefly about how official education represented Jews, rather than a large local Jewish community. Earlier textbook reviews documented religious demonization and collective-enemy language.

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Published by WTJPublication updated

A prejudice taught through state institutions

The modern Saudi account is chiefly about how official education represented Jews, rather than a large local Jewish community. Earlier textbook reviews documented religious demonization and collective-enemy language. European conspiracy claims added a different layer, while the Arab–Israeli conflict supplied a modern political setting. State-approved lessons could give these ideas authority for new generations. Later textbook revisions removed substantial hostile content, showing that the transmission depended on changeable institutional choices.

Late 1990s–2008 reviews

Teaching an enemy · The schoolbook gives prejudice an official voice

Earlier Saudi textbooks made hostile collective claims about Jews part of formal learning.

A child learns a collective category

Reviews of earlier Saudi schoolbooks documented portrayals of Jews as enemies and morally suspect. The problem was the transfer from selected religious stories to claims about Jews as a people. A student could be taught to judge a group before meeting any of its members.

Religious language acquires state authority

A textbook is not merely one preacher’s opinion. When approved for schools, its lessons carry institutional authority and are repeatedly taught. Hostile language could therefore travel through a structured national system. That mechanism matters more than assuming every teacher or student accepted every passage.

Belief and demonization differ

A religion can disagree with another faith’s teachings without portraying its followers as a dangerous collective enemy. The reviewed passages crossed that distinction where they assigned hostile characteristics to Jews as a group. Examining the actual wording explains what made the teaching antisemitic.

Twentieth century

State, religion & conflict · A modern state can reuse an older accusation

Religious teaching and regional politics operated together through institutions with contemporary power.

The setting is a modern kingdom

Saudi Arabia was established in 1932. Its modern institutions inherited religious traditions but made their own choices about public teaching. The kingdom should not be treated as if it were identical to every earlier society in Arabia. The state’s responsibility lies in what it selected, endorsed and taught.

The conflict supplies a new frame

The Arab–Israeli conflict gave anti-Jewish representations a contemporary political setting. Claims about Israel could be extended to Jews everywhere. That extension obscured differences between a government, its citizens and Jewish people in other countries. It transformed a specific conflict into collective blame.

Authority makes repetition powerful

When the same enemy image appears across lessons, it can become an apparently ordinary fact. Students are offered a ready explanation for future events. This is an interpretation of how institutional teaching can transmit prejudice; the textbook record does not measure each student’s beliefs or later conduct.

Late twentieth–early twenty-first century

Imported conspiracy · A European forgery enters another language

Conspiracy supplied a modern hidden-power story alongside older religious hostility.

The Protocols claim

Earlier curriculum research documented references to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion within hostile representations of Jews. The text originated as a European fabrication, not an Islamic revelation or an authentic record. Its movement across languages shows how a local political setting can borrow an international antisemitic script.

The forgery’s false promise

The Protocols claimed to expose a Jewish plan controlling governments, media and finance. Its supposed meetings never occurred, and parts were plagiarized from unrelated writing. The story made contradictory events look like one secret project. Publication or classroom repetition could not turn the forgery into evidence.

The layers reinforce each other

A religious enemy image and a global-control conspiracy make different claims. Combined, they can portray Jews as both inherently hostile and secretly powerful. Keeping the layers distinct explains their origins: the modern conspiracy was borrowed, while its institutional adoption was a decision in the Saudi setting.

2023–2024 review

Curriculum changes · The lesson changes because someone rewrites it

Recent reviews found significant removals of hostile content, alongside continuing religious intolerance.

A documented revision

The 2023–2024 textbook review reported further removal of hostile portrayals and material that had appeared in earlier editions. These changes matter because the same formal school system that transmitted prejudice can revise its content. The earlier passages should not be presented as if they were necessarily still being taught unchanged.

What remained in 2024

USCIRF’s August 2024 assessment noted progress while identifying remaining intolerant religious claims, including descriptions of other faiths as false. Its account concerned specific teaching and policy conditions. It did not establish that every Saudi person held an antisemitic view or that all problems had been resolved.

Reform changes a channel, not every belief

Removing a passage reduces one official route through which hostility can be learned. It does not measure how quickly earlier beliefs disappear from families or wider society. The meaningful historical change is institutional: a state can withdraw authority from an accusation it once helped repeat.

2023–present

October 7 & today · October 7 & today

Saudi religious exclusion remains institutional, while state-led textbook reform shows that an inherited prejudice can also be interrupted.

A visitor is told to remove his kippah

In March 2024, Rabbi Abraham Cooper visited Diriyah as part of a US religious-freedom delegation. Site officials told him to remove his kippah, the Jewish head covering he wore in public. He refused. The delegation was escorted out and shortened its visit.

The dispute made an institutional boundary visible. A Jewish visitor could be present, but officials challenged the visible sign of his religion. The episode belonged to the period after October 7, although the account does not establish that the attack caused it.

The state decides what is taught and permitted

Saudi Arabia’s distinctive inheritance runs through monarchy, religious administration and official education. Earlier approved textbooks carried anti-Jewish religious and conspiracy themes; restrictions on non-Muslim public worship made religious hierarchy enforceable. The state could reproduce prejudice through both teaching and the rules of visible public life.

After October 7, diplomatic conditions concerning Palestinian statehood and Gaza belonged to a different question from requiring a Jewish visitor to remove his kippah. The latter directly restricted religious visibility. Meanwhile, later curriculum reviews documented continuing reforms. This is a mixture of inherited exclusion and institutional change, rather than a documented domestic red–green alliance or a verified uniform incident surge. Following who can enforce or revise the rules explains the country more accurately than importing another country’s protest politics.

A different lesson enters the classroom

Earlier Saudi textbooks carried anti-Jewish religious and conspiratorial teaching. Because these were approved schoolbooks, the prejudice had an institutional route into the lives of successive pupils.

Later reviews document continuing revisions, including changes reported in 2026. The same state capable of preserving exclusion could also change what it taught. Alongside restrictions on non-Muslim public worship, this makes the present a story of conflicting developments: barriers that remain, and inherited hostility that institutions can choose to stop passing on.