A lot of things, positive and negative, are said and felt about Jews by non-Jews surrounding them. How does one even begin to map that sea of emotions and ideas? It is possible. Pew Research Center, for example, surveyed the world in the early 21st century asking how people felt towards different ethnic and religious groups. Building on the their data, the following basic mapping becomes possible. To obtain an impression about specific countries, rather than the global picture, follow this link.
the early 21st century
Source: Staetsky, L. Daniel. 2019. Global levels, trends and correlates of antisemitic attitudes through the prism of modernisation theory: insights from the Pew Research Center and World Values surveys, Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism 2(1).
Graph is based on data collected by Pew Research Institute in 2004-2016
What to make out of it?
1. The highest levels are observed in Islamic countries, the lowest – what is conventionally understood as the West. The rest of the world, Eastern Europe, Latin America etc are in between these two poles.
2. In the West, 5%-15% of people are ready to admit to not liking Jews. These levels can be considered as minimal. Expressing unqualified and indiscriminate negativity towards an ethnic group is not socially acceptable in the West and so some degree of self-censoring may be present (the so-called ‘social desirability effect’).
3. The extent to which people self-censor is not expected to distort the actual comparison: if Western levels are corrected upwards, the West will still remain the place with the lowest levels of negativity towards Jews.
4. ‘Favourability’ as such is not the only measure relevant to understanding of anti-Jewish feelings. There are other opinions that people hold about Jews, not all negative. Yet, antisemitism is ‘elastic‘, which is another way of saying that there is more to it than what can be observed via the lens of ‘favourability’. When Jews judge the feelings of the society towards them, they take into account not just the open hostility but the whole spectrum of opinion.
5. Public opinion towards Israel and Zionism is a separate issue, not covered by measuring opinions about Jews. Negativity towards Israel and Zionism is more widespread in the West than negativity towards Jews and people are less concerned about expressing this sentiment compared to antisemitism. That too impacts on how Jews perceive their status in the society.
6. Finally, the full meaning of these data are is not clear at present. What is ‘low’ and what is ‘high’ level? In particular, how high the level of popular antisemitism should be to make political persecution of Jews possible? This is something that scholars of antisemitism should be able to tell yet they cannot do so. It is also their best kept secret.