Jonathan Greenblatt is the CEO and National Director of the Anti-Defamation League.
An intractable virus of hate that has ebbed and flowed through the centuries, antisemitism has plagued Jews in virtually every country around the world. And in the aftermath of the horrific Oct. 7 attacks, it has found startling new staying power.
For careful observers like me, the harassment, assaults and vandalism against Jewish communities over the past 15 months have provided a confounding coda to one of the deadliest attacks on Jews since the Holocaust. And today, we have new data, which provides a better understanding of the ideas and beliefs that may be providing grist for these disturbing trends.
Marking the 10th anniversary of the Anti-Defamation League’s Global 100 Survey, which was first conducted in 2014, we set out to ask participants from 103 countries and territories around the globe the same questions once more. Resulting in the world’s most extensive survey on antisemitism ever conducted, we found that as of the end of 2024, about 46 percent of the world’s adult population held elevated levels of antisemitic beliefs.
This means that in the last decade, the number of adults with elevated antisemitic attitudes has doubled to a staggering 2.2 billion people.
Nearly one out of every two adults worldwide now endorse the majority of the 11 antisemitic tropes we presented them with — tropes such as “Jews are responsible for most of the world’s wars,” or “Jews are more loyal to Israel than their home country.” And only 48 percent of those polled recognized the Holocaust’s historical accuracy — that number dropped to 39 percent among those aged 18 to 34, 27 percent of whom haven’t heard about the Holocaust at all.
Simply put, this data reveals a stark failure to pass on the memory and lessons of the Holocaust to younger generations — the very future of our world.
We’ve reached a critical tipping point, and it’s time to sound every alarm.
We all saw the harassment of Jews on college campuses. We saw the appalling yet increasingly normalized display of Hamas and Hezbollah flags in cities like New York, Sydney and Toronto. Still, it was shocking to find that nearly one quarter of respondents worldwide expressed favorable opinions toward the Palestinian terror group Hamas.
In regions like the Middle East and North Africa, 76 percent of respondents believed most of the survey’s 11 antisemitic tropes to be true. Troublingly, around half the respondents in Asia, Eastern Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa held high levels of antisemitic attitudes as well. And while the Americas, Western Europe and Oceania had relatively lower levels of antisemitic attitudes, we found that around one in five adults still harbored these sentiments.
This data needs to be a wake-up call. Antisemitism isn’t an abstract issue — it’s a threat that manifests in violence, hatred and the erosion of social cohesion. We’ve seen this even in countries with the lowest levels of antisemitic attitudes, including in North America and Western Europe, in the many horrific antisemitic incidents perpetrated by a small, vocal and violent minority.
The ugly incident that took place in the Netherlands just months ago, in the city where Anne Frank once hid from Nazis, is an all-too-real example of this phenomenon.
Yet, amid these alarming findings, the survey also identified avenues for possible and urgent change. Encouragingly, 57 percent of respondents recognized that hate toward Jews is a serious problem in the world. But that’s just a start.
Governments and leaders worldwide need to take a stand against antisemitism and all forms of hate. Words of condemnation are no longer enough. We need robust hate crime laws that punish bigoted conduct, while also providing tangible protections for vulnerable communities. For instance, legislative protections for Jews and targeted Holocaust education for young students can help mitigate the harmful effects of these rampant anti-Jewish attitudes.
Additionally, in order to mitigate the ever-present threat of antisemitism and protect Jewish communities, governments, international organizations and NGOs should adopt and implement the Global Guidelines for Countering Antisemitism. Safety is a most basic right.
We also musn’t forget that when it comes to understanding antisemitism in any country, antisemitic attitudes are just one piece of the puzzle. The full picture must take societal attitudes, as well as government actions, the state of public discourse, religious freedom and more into account. Only by looking at these different aspects together can we really grasp the environment that Jewish individuals are living in globally, and work toward creating a safer, more inclusive reality.
The world is watching our response to this growing crisis. If we fail, the future will be one where hate and extremism are no longer pushed to the fringes but embraced by the mainstream.
Let’s make this the last record of hate we ever have to break.
The post Nearly half the world’s population holds antisemitic beliefs appeared first on Politico.
