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Friday November 9, 2007

ADL poll claims anti-Semitism is holding steady

by joe eskenazi
staff writer

Do you believe that “Jews have too much power in the business world”? Or that “Jews are more willing than others to use shady practices to get what they want”? Or that “Jews are more loyal to Israel than America”?

If so, to paraphrase the words of comic Jeff Foxworthy, you might be an anti-Semite.

The Anti-Defamation League late last month released the results of a poll of 2,000 random Americans that asked 11 questions, including the three stated above. Answering “yes” to six or more qualifies you as an anti-Semite.

According to the poll, 15 percent of Americans display anti-Semitic attitudes, compared to 14 percent two years ago and 17 percent in 2002. Since the margin of error for the poll is slightly more than 2 percent, anti-Semitism appears to be in a holding pattern in the United States.

“It’s obviously disturbing that the equivalent of about 35 million Americans hold anti-Semitic viewpoints,” said Jonathan Bernstein, the ADL’s regional director.

Roughly double the percentage of Europeans hold such views, he notes.

“We wanted to see how we compare to Europe. Comparatively speaking, it’s better. But there’s still work to do.”

The trends underscored in this year’s survey are similar to those unveiled in the 2005 poll. America’s most troublesome bastions of anti-Semitism were, once again, the nation’s black and foreign-born Latino populations. Twenty-nine percent of foreign-born Latinos hold anti-Semitic views according to the poll, compared with 35 percent in the ’05 tally.

Bernstein blames Latin American Catholic churches, which have been slow to adopt the teachings of Vatican II, for the numbers.

Among blacks, 32 percent espoused anti-Semitic views.

In both cases, Bernstein traced the results to the tendency of populations with a lower percentage of college graduates to poll as more anti-Semitic.

Among college educated-blacks, only 19 percent polled as anti-Semitic. In context, however, only 10 percent of the general college-educated population came up as anti-Semitic, so there is still some disparity.

“What I think this poll shows is that campus is sort of an incubator for forces that oppose anti-Semitism,” Bernstein said. “Some people in the community feel like campus is not a safe place for our Jewish kids. In fact, it may be the best place for them.”

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