The Problem with the ADL Global 100 Index of Antisemitism

As a last hurrah for long term National  Director Abe Foxman, the ADL released findings yesterday from its Global 100 Index of Antisemitism.  The overall finding was that 26% of the more than 53,100 respondents evinced the “deep infection” of Antisemitism.  Extrapolating that figure translates to over 1.09 billion of the World’s Population.  The polling was done by a survey contractor over the period from June 2013 to February 2014 via phone and personal interviews in more than 96 languages of the respondents.  An interactive website of the Global Index 100 results by country can be found, here. The ADL news release noted the high prevalence of Antisemitism among Muslim majority countries:

Among Muslims, which comprise 22.7 percent of the world population, 49 percent harbor anti-Semitic attitudes. In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), the number of Muslims holding anti-Semitic attitudes is 75 percent.

The ADL’s survey contractor used a battery of 11 questions to ascertain responses regarding perceptions of Jews and their influence locally and globally.  The ADL News release noted the basis for the Global 100 Index and Foxman’s cherished hope for an enduring legacy:

The overall ADL Global 100 Index score represents the percentage of respondents who answered “probably true” to six or more of 11 negative stereotypes about Jews. An 11-question index has been used by ADL as a key metric in measuring anti-Semitic attitudes in the United States for the last 50 years.

“For the first time we have a real sense of how pervasive and persistent anti-Semitism is today around the world,” said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director.  “The data from the Global 100 Index enables us to look beyond anti-Semitic incidents and rhetoric and quantify the prevalence of anti-Semitic attitudes across the globe. We can now identify hotspots, as well as countries and regions of the world where hatred of Jews is essentially non-existent.”

However, because of the low average  sample  per country,  approximately 521,  there is a serious question of whether the data base that Foxman hoped for from the ADL Global Index results would  have enough  detail  upon which to base an  enduring legacy to aid in developing prescriptive strategies in ameliorating  Antisemitism.  Antisemitism has existed because of nativist, religious and racial strains that have persisted for more than two millennia.  This despit anniversary , as a bastion and refuge for world Jewry in the heartland of the hate filled Middle East.

The country findings confirm other independent surveys, such as those conducted by the Pew Trust in Muslim countries of persistently high presence of Antisemitism; the highest occurring in the Palestine Authority and Gaza at 93%, and more than 15 other countries in the Muslim nations of MENA.

The Pew Trust Attitude Survey  in 2005 noted the extent of virulent Antisemitism across the Muslim Ummah. It interviewed more than 330,000 respondents in more than 60 countries. Antisemitism which many believe is a product of doctrinal Islamic  hatred towards Jews:

According to the Pew Global Attitudes Project released on August 14, 2005, high percentages of the populations of six Muslim-majority countries have negative views of Jews. To a questionnaire asking respondents to give their views of members of various religions along a spectrum from “very favorable” to “very unfavorable”, 60% of Turks, 74% of Pakistanis, 76% of Indonesians, 88% of Moroccans, 99% of Lebanese Muslims and 100% of Jordanians checked either “somewhat unfavorable” or “very unfavorable” for Jews.^[3]

The top Antisemitic countries/territories ranked by the ADL 100 Global Index are:

• West Bank and Gaza – 93 percent of the adult population holds anti-Semitic views
• Iraq – 92 percent
• Yemen – 88 percent
• Algeria – 87 percent
• Libya – 87 percent
• Tunisia – 86 percent
• Kuwait – 82 percent
• Bahrain – 81 percent
• Jordan – 81 percent
• Morocco – 80 percent

The lowest-ranked countries in terms of Antisemitism  in the ADL Global Index are:

• Laos – 0.2 percent of the adult population holds anti-Semitic views
• Philippines — 3 percent
• Sweden – 4 percent
• Netherlands – 5 percent
• Vietnam – 6 percent
• United Kingdom – 8 percent
• United States – 9 percent
• Denmark – 9 percent
• Tanzania – 12 percent
• Thailand – 13 percent

However,   there is a problem. The ADL Global 100 Index didn’t address the matter of hatred of Israel, other than the dual loyalty question.   19th and 20^thCentury Antisemitism was  evident  in  the Czarist Forgery , The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and earlier the anti-Dreyfusard  French Anti-Semitic political  Publication, La Libre Parole .  They  portrayed Jews as a controlling octopus of influence in international finance, culture and   governments. This, plus racial strains characterizing  Jews as sub-human,  paved the way for Hitler’s Final Solution that resulted in the murder of Six Million Jewish Men, Women and Children in the Holocaust.  The ADL Global 100 Index found that slightly more than half (54 percent) of survey respondents had heard of the Holocaust.  A fore telling that when the last survivors are gone, so will the World’s institutional memory of this genocide committed by the Nazis against European Jews.

The missing question(s) in the ADL Global 100 might have changed the results for respondents in Europe who ironically now consider Israel as the moral equivalent of Nazis for “oppression, and occupation” of the people in the disputed territories, the Palestinians.

What this ADL Index lacks are questions on anti-Israelism that the former chairman of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld, used to derive the extent of European Antisemitism.   His estimate was that fully 150 million Europeans in the EU countries harbor such anti-Israelism/ Anti-Semitic opinions. Opinions that verge on moral inversion: i.e., buying into the Palestinian meta narrative that Israel is the new Nazi state.   Where Israel was once David, it is now perceived as Goliath fighting the Palestinian David.  If the ADL Global 100 Index had posed the anti-Israel questions used by Gerstenfeld in developing his estimate the results for European counties may have been dramatically different. See our NER review of  Demonizing Israel and the Jews by Gerstenfeld.

When we interviewed Gerstenfeld in the  September 2013 NER, Anti-Israelism is Anti-Semitism,  he responded:

Gordon:  How did you arrive at the number 150 million?

Gerstenfeld:  I culled data from four surveys in which people were asked in nine European countries as to whether they agreed with the statement, “Israel is conducting a war of extermination against the Palestinians,” or alternatively, that Israel was behaving toward the Palestinians like the Nazis did toward the Jews.

Those who answered in the affirmative have deeply anti-Semitic views. In seven EU countries, the lowest responses to the first question were in Italy and the Netherlands – around 38% to 39%. Poland’s response was the highest at 63%. In the U.K, Hungary, Germany and Portugal, responses ranged from 40 to 49%. I then did a simple calculation based on the percentage of people 16 years and older in the European Union.  Broadly speaking 80% of about 500 million citizens in the EU are 16 years old or over. There are thus an estimated 400 million ‘adult’ Europeans. I applied a conservative estimate based on the lowest country response to the question about Israel exterminating the Palestinians which was 38%, to the 400 million adult Europeans. That is how I arrived at an estimate of 150 million.

When we noticed single digit responses in the ADL Global 100 survey results for some of the problematic European countries cited by Gerstenfeld, we had in mind his further response in our interview:

Gordon:  Why is anti-Israelism equated with anti-Semitism?

Gerstenfeld:  Hate-mongering by Muslims and others employs the same motifs that Medieval Christians and Nazi hate mongers used. The claim that Israel is exterminating the Palestinians is slanderous because the Palestinian population has only increased in past decades. Palestinian children and babies are cared for in Israeli hospitals. Palestinian patients are treated in Israeli hospitals and so on.

The anti-Israel hate mongers who claim that Israel harvests the organs of Palestinians are promoting a modern mutation of the anti-Semitic blood libel which was invented in England in the 12th century. There are demonizing anti-Semitic statements emanating from the Muslim world claiming that Jews are “descendents of apes and pigs.” This animalization of the Jewish people comes out of the Quran. One problem is that there are so few anti-Semitism scholars in the world that these things have not been properly exposed in great detail. There is no doubt that anti-Israelism is a third major type of anti-Semitism, like religious and ethnic/nationalistic anti-Semitisms were major types. This anti-Israelism has permeated the mainstream in several European countries. We find it for instance in many Socialist or Labor parties, including those in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, The Netherlands and Belgium.

Gerstenfield’s assessment is confirmed in independent surveys in European countries. Note the results of this Belgian survey of high school students reported in June 2013:

A major survey among Belgian teenagers indicated anti-Semitism was seven times more prevalent among Muslim youths than in non-Muslim teenagers.

Conducted in recent months by three universities for the Flemish government, the survey was published last month based on questionnaires filled out by 3,867 high school students in Antwerp and Ghent, including 1,068 Muslims.

Among Muslims, 50.9 percent of respondents agreed with the statement “Jews foment war and blame others for it” compared to only 7.1 percent among non-Muslims. Among Muslims, 24.5 percent said they partially agreed with the statement, as did 20.6 percent of non-Muslims.

The statement “Jews seek to control everything” received a 45.1 approval rating among Muslims compared to 10.8 approval among non-Muslims. Of Muslims, 27.9 percent said they partially agreed, as did 29.2 percent of non-Muslims.

About 35 percent of Muslims agreed with the statement that “Jews have too much clout in Belgium” compared to 11.8 percent of non-Muslimswho participated in the “Young in Antwerp and Ghent” survey. The results were part of a 360-page report which was produced for the Flemish government’s Youth Research Platform by the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Ghent University and Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

The problem with the ADL Global 100 survey is compounded by translation and differential responses to questions about Jews in countries where there is little presence or exposure, e.g., Laos.  Then there are the responses in Poland, Lithuania, Hungary, Greece and the Ukraine to survey questions regarding a Jewish population virtually destroyed during the Shoah.  Lingering historical  Antisemitism persists in these Eastern European  countries and Greece driving  their responses.

The Global ADL 100 index results masks the independent European responses from both the Gerstenfeld  and independent  analysis that found that Muslim émigrés had upwards of 8 times the Antisemitic responses  of  non-Muslim residents .  Responses from the PA, Gaza and Arab countries in the Middle East and North Africa uniformly reflect the hateful Islamic doctrine of Majority muslim MENA countries who  over 60 years ago drove out their “Saturday people”  Mizrahi and Megrabi  Jews. The MENA countries are presently forcing the expulsion of the indigenous “Sunday people”, the original Christian residents before the onslaught of Jihad 14 centuries ago.  There is the except in MENA. The stunning response in the ADL Global 100 Index that Iranians appear not to be inclined to follow the theocratic Antisemitism hatred of the Shiite Mullahs.  Having spoken with Iranian émigrés here in the US, they had 2,700 years of living in comity with Jews.  This despite the horrible period from the 16th to the 20th Century under the Safayid Empire and the Shiite mullahs. It was only in the 20^th Century under the Pahlavi dynasty that indigenous Jews and Persian women flourished as did trade with Israel. That ended with the Islamic Revolution of 1979 that ended liberty for all Iranians. The largest listener audience for Israel’s Farsi language service today is Iranians.

Finally, there is the famous assessment about surveys and polls by that great fictional sociologist, Humpty Dumpty who had this famous exchange with Alice inThrough the Looking Glass:

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”

Thus in the context of the ADL Global  100  Index, contrast the questions about perceptions of Jews  based on  the current US  Index versus those chosen by Gerstenfeld for analysis of Anti-Israelism as Anti-Semitism.  What is the careworn expression about polls and surveys?  You only get responses to the questions you choose to ask. Even then, because of differential negative perceptions of Jews, real or fantasized, you end up with the results reported by Abe Foxman and his team of pollsters.  The ADL Global 100 Index results may not comprehensively identify the roiling problems of Muslim and nativist Antisemitism globally and in the West.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on The New English Review. The featured photo is of graffito in a restroom at the University of Chicago courtesy of The Coffee Shop Rabbi.