by Lauren Markoe
(RNS) The first ever global study of anti-Semitic attitudes shows that more than a quarter of the world’s population (26 percent) harbors anti-Semitic views.
The poll, released Tuesday (May 13) by the Anti-Defamation League, also finds that a large proportion of the world has never heard of the Holocaust, or denies historical accounts of it.
Of those polled, 54 percent of those polled — and less than half of those under 35 years old — had heard of the Holocaust.
“For the first time we have a real sense of how pervasive and persistent anti-Semitism is today around the world,” said Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League.
He called the results of the survey “sobering but not surprising” and said it would serve as a baseline for the New York-based ADL, one of the premier organizations battling anti-Semitism and bigotry worldwide, to understand where it is most prevalent and education is most necessary. The results of the survey — of 102 nations and territories — revealed stark regional differences, and hotspots of anti-Semitism around the globe.
For example, the survey shows that Greece, at 69 percent, has the highest levels of anti-Semitic attitudes among its people of any country outside the Middle East, a proportion far higher than the Western European average of 34 percent.
Already Foxman said, “the prime minister of Greece had learned of our findings and requested that we come and visit.”
Though the survey found Muslims to harbor more anti-Semitic views than Christians, Hindus and Buddhists, and though Protestants fared better in the survey than any other religious group, in region more than religion correlated with a person’s views on Jews.
Nearly half the Muslims surveyed (49 percent) were found to hold anti-Semitic views. In the Middle East and North Africa, 74 percent held anti-Semitic views. That compares to 23 percent in Sub-Saharan Africa, 22 percent in Asia, 19 percent in the Americas and 14 percent in Oceania, the region with the lowest anti-Semitic scores in the world.
Muslims outside the Middle East and North Africa reveal far fewer anti-Semitic attitudes than those within that region. And 64 percent of Christians the Middle East and North Africa held anti-Semitic views compared to 24 percent of Christians overall.
The ADL’s “Global 100 Index” also found that the least anti-Semitic place in the world is Laos, where anti-Semitic beliefs are held by .2 percent of the population. The most anti-Semitic is in the West Bank, which is under Israeli control, and Gaza, where 93 percent of people held anti-Semitic beliefs.
The surveys 10 most anti-Semitic countries and territories are: The West Bank and Gaza, Iraq, Yemen, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan and Morocco.
The surveys 10 least anti-Semitics countries are: Laos, Philippines, Sweden, Netherlands, Vietnam, United Kingdom, United States, Denmark, Tanzania and Thailand.
In the U.S., the survey found, nine percent of those surveyed revealed anti-Semitic views.
The poll is 11 questions that refer to common stereotypes about Jews, a metric that the ADL has used in parts of the world for more than 50 years to test anti-Semitic attitudes. Those who answered “probably true” to six or more questions were deemed to harbor anti-Semitic attitudes. Asked if a person couldn’t be anti-Semitic for answering three questions in the affirmative, Foxman said the ADL purposely set the bar for anti-Semitism very high, so as to make its results very conservative.
One of the questions asks whether Jews are more loyal to Israel than their home country. A majority of respondants said this was true. Foxman said there is no evidence in the poll that the Arab-Israeli conflict is a cause of anti-Semitism.
Of the 74 percent of those surveyed who said they had never met a Jew, a quarter displayed anti-Semitic attitudes. Of the more than a quarter (26 percent) who harbor anti-Semitic attitudes, 70 percent had never met a Jewish person, the survey showed. Overall, 28 percent of those surveyed answered “no” to all 11 stereotypes presented of Jews when asked if they were true.
Survey researchers polled more than 53,000 adults in 96 languages. The study has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points for most countries.
It was funded by a grant from New York philanthropist Leonard Stern. Foxman said the survey cost “a lot” but would not say exactly how much.
