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Swedes ranked 'least anti-Semitic' in Europe

The Local Sweden
The Local Sweden - [email protected]
Swedes ranked 'least anti-Semitic' in Europe

One in twenty Swedes hold anti-Semitic views, according to a report released on Tuesday by the non-profit Anti-Defamation League (ADL), enough to rank Sweden as the least anti-Semitic country in Europe.

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Based on worldwide survey of 53,100 adults across 101 countries, a global average of 26 percent of people can be classed as anti-Semitic, the Anti-Defamation League said.
 
Swedes, meanwhile, pulled in the lowest scores in Europe with four percent of respondents classed as prejudiced against Jews. 
 
 
ADL researchers classed respondents as anti-Semitic if they answered 'probably true' to six out of 11 statements that corresponded to "anti-Semitic stereotypes" in the questionnaire.
 
The most common anti-Semitic belief was that "Jews are more loyal to Israel than to [this country/the countries they live in]", which was seen as 'probably true' by 41 percent of respondents worldwide and 45 percent in western Europe.
 
"For the first time we have a real sense of how pervasive and persistent anti-Semitism is today around the world,” said Abraham Foxman, the national director of the US-based non-profit ADL.
 
Jews in Sweden, however, may not be so impressed by the results. As recently as October, a survey revealed that half of Swedish Jews hide their religion
 
In the Middle East and North Africa, the proportion of those deemed anti-Semitic in the survey was 74 percent, whereas the Europe-wide average dropped to 24 percent.
 
Within Europe, the highest number of anti-Semites were recorded in Greece, with 69 percent of adults agreeing with six or more of  the 11 statements in the survey. France received western Europe's worst result, with 37 percent of surveyed adults fitting the bill of an anti-Semite. 
 
Germany, where one percent of the population is Jewish, scored in the middle of European countries, with 27 percent of those surveyed deemed anti-Semitic.
 
The highest concentration of anti-Semitic views was found on the West Bank and in Gaza, where 93 percent of respondents were classed as anti-Semitic. The next highest concentration was in Iraq, where 92 percent agreed with the statements in the survey.
 
The ADL survey also found that just 54 percent of respondents worldwide had heard of the Holocaust, which Foxman described as “a disturbingly low number.”
 
The survey, conducted between July 2013 and February this year, was based on questionnaires filled in by adults in 102 countries whose populations account for 88 percent of the world’s adults.

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