A Quarter Of The World Is Anti-Semitic

A startling new survey about anti-Semitism was released Tuesday, and results are jarring and dispiriting — just over one-quarter of the global adult population are anti-Semitic, it revealed. Commissioned by the Anti-Defamation League and performed by First International Resources, the research measured the attitudes of 53,100 interviewees from 102 countries, who were asked 11 core questions relating to Jewish stereotypes or conspiracy theories.

The total adult population of all the countries surveyed amounted to just over 4.1 billion, and a whopping 1.09 billion are, according to the ADL, "deeply infected" with anti-Semitism. The survey classified a person as anti-Semitic if they answered approvingly to a majority of these 11 questions:

• Jews are more loyal to Israel than to [this country/the countries they live in].
• Jews have too much power in international financial markets.
• Jews have too much control over global affairs.
• Jews think they are better than other people.
• Jews have too much control over the global media.
• Jews are responsible for most of the world's wars.
• Jews have too much power in the business world.
• Jews don't care what happens to anyone but their own kind.
• People hate Jews because of the way Jews behave.
• Jews have too much control over the United States government.
• Jews still talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust.

There's another especially shocking finding, regarding both people's attitudes towards the Jewish people, and their understanding of history: A full 46 percent of those surveyed either had no knowledge of the Holocaust, or denied its existence, which is a grim state of affairs indeed.

Conversely — and on a slightly brighter note — if you're looking for a place happily free from such prejudice, you'd be well served to visit Oceania. Australia, New Zealand and the rest of the Oceanic islands, which boast the lowest rates of anti-Semitism in the world at 14 percent. ADL chief Abe Foxman said of the survey:

We can now identify hotspots, as well as countries and regions of the world where hatred of Jews is essentially nonexistent.

The Americas, by way of comparison, are the second-least anti-Semitic of the world's major regions, with just 19 percent of respondents confirming such sentiments.