Nearly half of adults around the world have “elevated levels of antisemitic attitudes,” the Anti-Defamation League reported in its latest global survey of anti-Jewish beliefs.
In addition, the survey found that one-fifth of the world has not heard of the Holocaust. About half accept the Holocaust’s historical truth.
Known as the Global 100, the survey represents 94% of the world’s population through responses from a sample of more than 58,000 adults across 103 countries and territories.
As it has in its previous surveys, the ADL determined levels of antisemitism by posing 11 antisemitic statements to each respondent and asking how many they agreed with. The group said that 46% of respondents agreed with most of the stereotypes tested, which include statements like “Jews have too much control over global affairs” and “Jews don’t care about what happens to anyone but their own kind.”
By that measure, the level of global antisemitism documented by the ADL appears to have sharply increased from 2014, when the group first did such a survey and found that 26% of adults were “deeply infected with anti-Semitic attitudes.”
The comparison isn’t perfect because that study contained a slightly different list of questions, asking if Jews have too much power in international financial markets (that question was replaced by asking if Jews have “a lot of irritating faults”). The 2014 survey also covered less of the world, but the total number of people estimated to have such beliefs doubled from 1.1 billion to 2.2 billion adults. Over that time, according to the United Nations, the global population increased by about 1 billion, from 7.2 billion to 8.2 billion.
According to the survey, awareness of the Holocaust and acceptance of its historical truth are much higher. In 2014, about half of respondents said they hadn’t heard of the Holocaust versus 20% in the new edition of the survey. Back then, a third said they had both heard of the Holocaust and believed historical accounts were accurate. Today, that figure stands at 48%, though it dips to 39% for those ages 18-34. .
The ADL’s findings are the latest evidence suggesting a surge in antisemitism around the world in recent years and following Hamas’ Oct. 7 2023 attack on Israel and the outbreak of the war in Gaza.
“Antisemitism is nothing short of a global emergency, especially in a post-October 7 world,” ADL CEO Jonathan A. Greenblatt said in a statement. “We are seeing these trends play out from the Middle East to Asia, from Europe to North and South America.”
Greenblatt’s tone reflects an alarm about antisemitism that wasn’t as widely shared when the group released the previous edition of the survey in 2014. Several commentators took issue with the survey’s methodology and conclusions. Abe Foxman, the head of the ADL at the time, for example, fended off allegations that the ADL was hyping up the problem.
“We frequently get accused of seeing anti-Semitism everywhere, and we’re very conscious about the credibility,” Foxman said at the time. “We were cautious, we were conservative, to understate rather than overstate.”
In a press briefing, Greenblatt highlighted as especially troubling that antisemitic attitudes are increasingly prevalent among young people. The survey found that half of respondents ages 18 to 35 revealed heightened levels of antisemitic sentiments, which is 13% higher than the figure for those over 50.
He blamed the problem on a number of factors including the workings of social media, where some limits on hate speech were recently lifted, and on what he characterized as a “nonstop fountain of antisemitism” emanating from the Qatari-owned broadcast network Al Jazeera. He also said that antisemitism was being normalized through some left-wing professors who allegedly camouflage their bigotry using scholarly rhetoric. Larger historical trends are also at fault for people’s negative attitudes about Jews, according to Greenblatt.
“The rise of conspiracism and populism and polarization has created a climate that’s fertile for scapegoating,” he said. “We have seen this throughout history and we are seeing it now.”
The countries and territories that scored highest on the ADL’s index of antisemitism were the West Bank and Gaza — where Israel is currently fighting a multi-front war with terror groups that has a mounting death toll — Kuwait and Indonesia, where at least 96% harbor high levels of anti-Jewish sentiment. The index score for the Middle East and North Africa as a whole was 76%.
The countries with the lowest levels of antisemitism were Sweden, Norway, Canada and the Netherlands which all scored 8% or lower.
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