Published in the Jerusalem Post, 27 January 2025
Nearly half the world hates
Jews – that is the stark message that emerges from the most comprehensive
survey of global public opinion on the subject ever undertaken. Published
on January 14, the results revealed that 46% of all adults in the world hold
entrenched antisemitic views.
The poll, known as the Global 100 Survey, was conducted between July and
November 2024 by the long-established Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in
conjunction with Ipsos, the multinational market research firm, and
others. More than 58,000 adults from 103 countries and
territories were surveyed, representing 94% of the global adult population.
Launched in
2014, the Global 100 Survey has conducted only three such polls. The latest not
only revealed the startling level of antisemitism across the globe. It
also showed that the proportion of adults worldwide harboring antisemitic
beliefs has rocketed from 26% in 2014 to 46% by 2024.
“Antisemitism is nothing short of a global emergency,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, ADL’s chief executive.
The results of the
latest survey are not all bad news. Perhaps demonstrating that political
and economic strength is respected, 87% of respondents do not want their
country to boycott Israeli products and businesses, while more than seven in
ten respondents believe their country should have diplomatic relations with
Israel and would welcome Israeli tourists. Moreover, despite uncovering
alarming antisemitic attitudes, the Global 100 data does show opportunities for
progress, since 57% of respondents recognized – such are the inconsistencies of
human nature –- that hatred toward Jews was a serious issue.
There are, however, few such
crumbs of comfort among the findings. The poll tested reaction to 11
common negative tropes about Jews. Three-quarters of respondents in the
Middle East and North Africa think most of them are true; the lowest levels of
belief in the tropes were in the Americas and Western Europe.
The most extraordinary aspect of
these findings are the basic mathematics. The total world population is
some 8 billion, of whom about 4 billion, the Survey reveals, hold antisemitic
views. But outside of Israel and the USA, there are only 2.3 million Jews
scattered thinly across the rest of the globe. How many of the 4 billion
poll-proved antisemites have ever seen a Jew? So what is the basis for all the
animosity? How meaningful is it? Given the fickleness of public opinion,
could, for example, the ceasefire in Gaza effect a massive swing in sentiment?
As for awareness of the Holocaust, sheer ignorance could account for the depressing findings. Some 20% of respondents knew nothing about it at all, while less than half of those questioned believed that the historical depiction of the Holocaust was true. While only 4% overall responded that “the Holocaust is a myth,“ 17% argued that the number of Jewish deaths was “greatly exaggerated by history.”
Clearly yet to make a global
impact is the historical truth that a sophisticated Western European nation
deliberately mobilized its industrial and military might and its bureaucracy to
undertake the mass slaughter of a whole people. Six million men, women
and children were massacred for no other reason than that they had been born.
Ignorance about Judaism, Jewish
people and their story, linked to incoherent and groundless prejudice, is not a
modern phenomenon. Jewish communities have been fighting it throughout
their history. It was, for example, the antisemitism rampant in parts of
early-twentieth century America that gave birth to the Anti-Defamation League
which sponsors the Global 100 Survey.
Before the First World War some Jewish
communities in America faced overt antisemitic discrimination. In 1913
Leo Frank, a Jewish-American businessman from New York, was the superintendent
of the National Pencil Company in Atlanta, Georgia. Mary Phagan was a
13-year-old employee. In April 1913 she was found murdered and sexually
violated in the factory’s basement.
Largely on account of testimony
from a janitor, Jim Conley, Frank became the prime suspect,. Giving
evidence riddled with contradictions, Conley claimed that he helped Frank move
the girl’s body.
Frank was arrested and, in a
prejudiced atmosphere inflamed by sensationalist media coverage, was tried,
convicted and sentenced to death. His legal team filed numerous
appeals, including to the US Supreme Court, which upheld the verdict. But
Georgia’s Governor John M Slaton had serious doubts about Frank’s guilt and, in
1915, commuted his sentence to life imprisonment.
His decision infuriated the public. The next day a mob calling itself the "Knights of Mary Phagan" stormed the prison in Milledgeville, Georgia, kidnapped Frank, transported him to Marietta, Mary Phagan's hometown, and lynched him. This horrific event was attended by a crowd, including prominent local figures, and photographs of what happened were distributed as souvenirs.
The overt antisemitic bigotry and
intolerance displayed during the trial of Leo Frank encouraged Chicago attorney
Sigmund Livingston to suggest creating an organization whose mission would be
"to stop the defamation of the Jewish people, and to secure justice and
fair treatment to all..." He succeeded, but in the event ADL was
founded on the clear premise that the fight against one form of prejudice
cannot succeed without battling prejudice in all forms. Today ADL is a
global leader in combating antisemitism, extremism and bigotry wherever it
occurs.
Marina Rosenberg, the ADL’s senior
vice president for international affairs, noted that even countries with lower
antisemitic attitudes, like the UK, have seen “many antisemitic incidents
perpetrated by an emboldened small, vocal and violent minority.”
Indeed, Britain’s Community
Security Trust (CST) reported a 204% increase in antisemitic incidents from
October 7, 2023, to September 30, 2024. Universities, hospitals and
synagogues also recorded huge increases in religiously motivated criminal incidents,
while ever since the Hamas pogrom large pro-Palestinian protest marches have
taken place through central London every Saturday.
“Antisemitic tropes and beliefs
are becoming alarmingly normalized across societies worldwide,” warned
Rosenberg. “This dangerous trend...is a wake-up call for collective
action.”
A parting thought. If nearly
half the world is antisemitic, then more than half the world isn't. That
is a solid enough base on which to start the process of building knowledge and
understanding of the long and often painful story of the Jewish people, and
their survival against all the odds to return, finally, to their ancient
homeland. Collective action against antisemitism must prioritize the message that
Israel is here to stay.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-839326
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