There are 1.09 billion anti-Semites in the world today. That’s right: more than a billion — about 135 for every Jew.
These are bigots who believe Jews are greedy, unethical manipulators who control the world and cause everything bad: 9/11. Financial crises. Communism. Dyspepsia. Name it.
It’s a stunning, hard-to-believe figure. But it comes from one of the most credible, comprehensive studies on the subject ever. And in an honest, sane, fair world, it would be a clarion call for immediate, steadfast action.
The study, released Tuesday by the Anti-Defamation League, included 53,100 respondents. Interviews were conducted in 96 languages in more than 100 countries. How did the researchers decide who is an anti-Semite?
They bent over backward to be conservative. Very conservative.
For example, harboring merely a few anti-Semitic beliefs didn’t make you an anti-Semite. So the real number of these bigots might actually be higher. Also, no one was considered an anti-Semite merely because of a hateful attitude toward Israel. We are talking only about clear-cut, old-fashioned Jew-haters.
Now, if you’re in the tri-state area and haven’t encountered this epidemic, it’s not surprising. The good news in this study, and others recently, is that the United States isn’t the problem.
Americans (along with Australians, British and a few others) typically score among the most tolerant in the world. Indeed, many Americans have very positive attitudes toward Jews.
So who exactly are the billion anti-Semites? For starters, 70 percent of them have never met a Jew.
Disproportionately, they hail from (no surprise) the Middle East and North Africa, where nearly three out of four endorse a whole slew of anti-Jewish beliefs. Some 92 percent of Iraqis, for example, qualified as anti-Semites, as did 69 percent of Turks.
Still, 880 million anti-Semites do not live in the Middle East or North Africa. The disease is global: Among Poles: at least 45 percent qualify as anti-Semites. Greeks: 69 percent. Malaysians: 61 percent. Russians: 30 percent. Spaniards: 29 percent. Germans: 27 percent. (They say the Germans will never forgive the Jews for the Holocaust.)
Most anti-Semites say people hate Jews “because of the ways they behave.” But what exactly have Jews done to Malaysians and Greeks?
Given the flood of anti-Jewish propaganda in the Muslim world, and the shamefully inadequate denunciation of it by mainstream Muslim leaders, it is hardly shocking that Muslims were found to be more anti-Semitic than other religious groups.
About half of all Muslims were anti-Semites, according to the survey. If you teach your children that Jews are the sons of pigs and apes, after a while it sinks in.
Still, region matters more than religion. Muslims in the West are quite a bit less likely to meet the criteria than those in the Middle East and North Africa. At the same time, many Christians in the Middle East and North Africa are also hostile to Jews.
More bad news: Among those worldwide who have heard of the Holocaust (54 percent), about one in three believes it is either a myth or has been greatly exaggerated.
In the Middle East and North Africa, that figure is nearly two in three. And the problem is getting worse. Young people are less likely to know about the Holocaust and less likely to accept what historians say about it.
So what are we to do? For starters, we might stop treating anti-Semitism like yesterday’s news.
University courses on racism and sexism almost never talk about anti-Semitism. When they do, they treat it as ancient history. Moreover, Jew-hatred cannot be understood as simply another instance of everyday prejudice. Nor should it be dismissed because it’s on the wane in America.
It has lasted 2,000 years. It has roots in the founding stories of Christianity and Islam. It has a genocidal potential.
Also, we might see progress among the half-billion Muslim anti-Semites if the so-called anti-racist community would stop excusing their bigotry and sweeping it under the rug. Meanwhile, a lot of countries have some explaining to do. We should not let them weasel out of their responsibility to address the hatred in their midst.
Finally, how about some honesty at the United Nations? The next time that august body votes to condemn Israel, perhaps the ambassadors ought to note where this is really coming from.
To wit: “The great state of Greece, where anti-Semites account for 69 percent of the population, votes to condemn.” It might not shame them, but at least it would put their votes in perspective.
Neil J. Kressel is the author, most recently, of “The Sons of Pigs and Apes: Muslim Antisemitism and the Conspiracy of Silence.”