A new poll put out by the Anti-Defamation League suggests that the level of “strong” antisemitic beliefs among Americans remain much lower than the levels seen in the organiza-tion’s European polls.
The poll, conducted during October, indicates that 15% of Americans believe Jews have “too much power in the U.S.” The ADL is touting this figure as a rise over the past few years. In 1998, the same figure was 12%. But the 3% change is just slightly higher than the survey’s margin of error.
ADL’s attitudinal survey, conducted periodically since the 1960s, presents respondents with a series of 11 negative statements about Jews and asks whether or not they agree. Responses in-dicating agreement with six of the statements are categorized as “strongly antisemitic” for statistical purposes. The methodology has been criticized in the past for counting as antisemitic some responses that turn out in focus groups to be seen positively, such as “Jews always stick together.”
The survey still paints a brighter picture of America than comparable polls have in Europe. ADL surveys in Europe earlier this year found that more than a third of the respondents believe Jews have too much power.
The ADL’s surveys in America have taken a particularly close look at beliefs among African Americans and Latinos.
Among African Americans, negative views of Jews were almost three times as high as those among white respondents.
The ADL’s polls have traced what the organization sees as an improvement in views toward Jews in the Latino community. The number of foreign-born Latinos who hold what the ADL char-acterizes as strong antisemitic beliefs was 29%, down from 35% in last year’s poll. Among American-born Latinos, the figure is half as big — at 15%.
Overall, the survey found that 31% of Americans believe Jews are more loyal to Israel than to America. That figure is down slightly, from 33% in 2005. Twenty-seven percent of the respondents said that Jews were responsible for the death of Christ, down from 30% last year. The survey had 2,000 respondents and a margin of error of 2.19%.
I don't need surveys to know that there are still prejudices against Jews - where do you think all these neo-nazi websites come from. The only hope is that these Jew-haters don't organize and come to power like they once did in Germany and Ukraine.http://khazarheritage.blogspot.com/
The expression of making lemonade out of lemons applies here. I'd like to tell my anti-semitic friends: If Jews can kill their Lord Christ,imagine how easily Jews could dispose of them, mere mortals. And please remind my friends to remove their flags and decals of Mexico, Puerto Rico, Ireland and Italy from their cars. I just wonder how patriotic are they to America, if you know what I mean.
The real scandal in the Jewish world is that we don't know how to deal with waning anti-semitism. One strategy, seen in some comments to this article, is to deny the waning, even though the difference between the way Jews were perceived when I was young (sixty years ago) and now is absurd. I finished a thirty-nine year career with a stalwart of the American big business world in 2003. I never lost any career opportunity because I am Jewish. On the contrary, my (non-Jewish) management always tried to move me higher than I wanted to go and there is never any question in the mind of anyone who meets me that I am Jewish. Hey, Jews, let's grow up and figure out how to handle the real crisis: what to do in an America with very little anti-semitism. Got some ideas on how we can induce our youngsters to stay Jewish? Let me lower the bar: got any ideas on how to define Judaism in some way that makes coherent sense to our youngsters, for whom any Jewish identity at all is purely a matter of choice? As Pogo said, We have met the enemy and it is us. It's not anti-semites, folks, it's US!
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