[IsraelTimes] Yet the study shines not in the details, but in its sweeping international perspective. In interviewing over 53,000 people in 93 languages across 102 countries and regions, the survey pieces together a global picture of the web of stereotypes and hatreds through which a significant swath of humanity views the Jews. It enables us to go beyond the narrow confines of each nation's politics and prejudices and think more deeply about the phenomenon and the essential question that lies at its root: Why do they hate us?
The question is put into sharp relief by the finding that fully 27% of people who have never met a Jew nevertheless harbor strong prejudices against him. Or, indeed, that a huge majority, 77%, of those who hate Jews have never met one. Even more starkly, the survey found an inverse relationship between the number of Jews in a country and the spread of anti-Semitic attitudes there. As a general rule, the fewer the Jews in a particular country, the more numerous the anti-Semites.
This should not surprise us. We already understood that anti-Semitism is skyrocketing in precisely those parts of the world where Jews fled from or perished in the last century, primarily the Middle East and Eastern Europe. But by giving numbers to these beliefs, the study allows us to think more carefully about the sources of the phenomenon. |