The Anti-Defamation League recently released a “landmark” study entitled “ADL Global 100: An Index of Anti-Semitism,” purporting to show percentages of people who hold anti-Semitic attitudes in more than 100 countries around the world.
The survey, available here, subdivides the world into 7 geographic regions, offering data collected from countries within each, the results of which endeavor to show such things as numbers of people who harbor “anti-Semitic stereotypes.”
For instance, in the region referred to as “Middle East-North Africa,” the study gathers data from 17 different countries and two territories (Gaza and the West Bank). It is in this part of the world that researchers reportedly found the highest rates of anti-Semitism. The MENA countries included in the survey are shown in the graphic below. You’ll note, however, that conspicuously absent from the list–is Israel.
In an article about the study, published May 13 in the Huffington Post, ADL Director Abe Foxman writes the following:
Our basic findings were sobering: More than one-quarter of the people surveyed (26 percent) harbor anti-Semitic attitudes. The stereotypes receiving the most support worldwide were those that generate dangerous political anti-Semitism, those questioning the loyalty of Jews and those asserting excessive Jewish power and influence. And, despite decades of efforts to promote Holocaust awareness, only 33 percent of those surveyed are aware of the Holocaust and believe that it is accurately described by historians.
Foxman goes on to describe the ADL Global 100 as a “landmark” study, referring to it as “the broadest public opinion survey of attitudes toward Jews around the world ever conducted.”
“Broadest”–except that it doesn’t include anti-Semitic attitudes held by Jews in Israeltoward their Arab neighbors.
One thing I have noticed about Israelis is that they seem to enjoy flaunting their racism, both on the streets and on social media websites. In the wake of the national angst over the kidnapped teens, a page entitled “The People of Israel Demand Vengeance” was put up on Facebook. I wrote about it in an article posted July 4 entitled Israeli Facebook Depravity Climbs to New Highs, and which included the two photos you see above along with several others. The Facebook site in question was removed after two days, but in that time it garnered 36,000 likes, according to Ma’an News, and a sizable collection of material from it, some thirty or so photos, has been archived here. I encourage you to go and peruse the collection. Much of it was posted by Israeli soldiers, and clearly murder of Palestinians is very much on their minds.
A couple of other Israeli Facebook pages have also been quite open in their advocacy of violence. One of these calls for the murder of a Palestinian every hour while the other features an article posted by an Israeli Knesset member calling for the genocide of Palestinians. Both of these are still up, and you can also go here and watch a video of a crowd of Israelis marching through Jerusalem shouting “Death to Arabs.”
Arabs, of course, are Semites. Ashkenazi Jews, on the other hand, are not Semites, despite claims to the contrary; Ashkenazi Jews are descended from the Khazars of southern Russia, or what is present-day Ukraine. The Khazars were not a Semitic people. They were a combination of Bulgars, Magyars, Slavs and others.
While certainly not every single Israeli is a racist, and some, such as Miko Peled and Ilan Pappe, have genuinely sought peace and reconciliation with Palestinians, the widespread calls for “death to Arabs” emanating from large segments of the Israeli population, along with thousands of “likes” garnered by Facebook pages such as those mentioned above, point to a rather inescapable conclusion: that Israel is one of the most, if not the most, overtly anti-Semitic nations on the face of the earth. Yet for some reason, the ADL failed to mention this or even, as I say, to include Israel on its “Global 100″ list of anti-Semitic countries.
We must wonder why, as per the conclusions of the study, the people of the Middle East-North Africa region might have the highest rates of anti-Semitism worldwide. Here is what Foxman says about that particular study finding in his Huffington Post article: “The high numbers of those who harbor anti-Semitic attitudes in the Middle East and North Africa are a challenge to the region — and the international community — going forward.”
In other words, the “challenge,” as Foxman sees it, is posed by problematic attitudes held by all the other peoples in the region–not by Israelis. It is a decidedly one-sided view of the situation and calls into question the validity of the entire study.
Could it possibly be–is it conceivable–that for the people of Lebanon, Syria and other countries that have been hit by Israeli missiles, Jewish behavior might have something to do with their negative attitudes toward Jews? Ah, but the notion that “people hate Jews because of the way Jews behave” is one of the “anti-Semitic stereotypes” the study grumbles about, the unspoken implications of such a position being that anti-Semitism is top to bottom thoroughly and wholly irrational and Jewish behavior can never be seen as other than exemplary.
Undertaken in order to “research attitudes and opinions toward Jews in more than 100 countries around the world,” the Global 100 study is the result of 53,100 interviews conducted between July 2013 and February 2014, and Foxman seems to regard it as the ADL’s magnum opus. He calls it “one of the most important efforts we have undertaken in our history as an organization.” Yet one wonders if maybe it wasn’t embarked upon with certain predetermined conclusions in mind.
Another question that begs to be asked is this: how many other ethnic groups in the world have ever commissioned such how-many-people-hate-us?-studies of this sort upon themselves? I suspect the answer is few to none.
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Are you an anti-Semite?
Well here it is–the list of “anti-Semitic stereotypes” (11 of them in all) used as criteria by conductors of the study to determine whether individual respondents held “anti-Semitic attitudes.” So how do you stack up? If you answer “probably true” to six or more of the following, then YOU are an anti-Semite, in the view of the ADL.
River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian
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