Poll: One in Four Adults Anti-Semitic

JERUSALEM, Israel -- The latest poll by the Anti-Defamation League revealed that one in four adults worldwide, an estimated 1.09 billion people, harbor deeply held anti-Semitic points of view and almost all Palestinians living in the territories do.

The highest concentration of people with anti-Semitic attitudes was found in Middle Eastern and North African countries. Of all those surveyed, Palestinian Arabs in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip topped the charts, with 93 percent of the adult population harboring anti-Semitic attitudes.

On the positive side, the poll showed a far lower level (13 percent) of anti-Semitism in English-speaking countries.

ADL commissioned First International Resources to carry out the survey between July 2013 and February 2014. Pollsters used 96 languages and dialects to speak with a demographically representative sample of randomly chosen adults by landline, cellphone and face-to-face interviews.

"For the first time, we have a real sense of how pervasive and persistent anti-Semitism is today around the world," Anti-Defamation League National Director Abe Fox said of the ADL Global 100 Index.

The poll of 102 countries and territories accounts for approximately 88 percent of the world's total adult population.

Slightly over half of those polled (54 percent) had not heard of the Holocaust. Two out of three had either never heard of the Holocaust or considered its historical accounts inaccurate.

ADL National Chair Barry Curtiss-Lusher hoped the survey would serve as a "wake-up call" to governments, international institutions and people of conscience that "anti-Semitism is not just a relic of history, but a current event."