Antisemitism on the rise

If a survey undertaken by the US-based Anti-Defamation League is to be believed, 4.7m Australians are antisemites. Is that really trueKim Wingerei looks at the data.

According to the ADL survey, “anti-Jewish sentiments are at an all-time high globally, revealing areas where governments must take action to tackle antisemitic hate.”

This has been playing out in Australia again this week, as State and Federal Governments are under pressure to act more forcefully after cars were set alight, synagogues burnt, and anti-Jewish slurs have been painted on buildings.

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said new hate-speech laws would be a priority when parliament returns. However, human rights expert Bill Swannie from the Australian Catholic University said the hate speech laws could have the opposite effect of what they set out to do.

“What we have seen in the past of criminalising hate speech laws is that it gives publicity to the wrong people and exacerbates targets for communities, rather than protect them,” Dr Swannie told AAP, who added:

It tends to be like moth to a flame in terms of attracting more hate speech.

Poll accuracy questioned

Buried in an  AFR report ($) on the ADL survey is the fact that only 594 people were polled. It is generally accepted that the minimum sample for such a poll should be 1,000; however, the sample size of this poll is still not insignificant.

The margin of error could be up to 5% for such a sample size, according to an MWM source. Based on this survey, 4.7 million Australians may indeed hold antisemitic views. However, statistically speaking, it is possible this number has been over-estimated (or under-estimated) to the tune of 1.2 million.

In fairness to the survey’s authors, but not mentioned in the AFR, they disclosed their estimated margin of error to be 4.4%. This still brings us to a potential overestimation of around 1 million.

The survey conducted by the US-based Jewish lobby group, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), polled 58,000 people in 103 nations and arrived at the conclusion that 46% of the world’s population holds deeply entrenched antisemitic views. One obvious problem with this poll is, including Palestine and the Holy See, there are 195 member states of the United Nations.

With only 47% of the world’s nations polled, MWM has queried ADL about what countries were included, but we have yet to receive a response.

The ADL survey, jointly conducted with Ipsos, cites 94% of the world’s population being covered in the survey. However, 35% of the world’s population comes from just two nations, India and China. Would it not be a far more representative reflection of cultural and religious factors to poll every nation to see how many nations held antisemitic views?

In the case of China, the ADL claims 660.5 million Chinese adults harbour “elevated levels of antisemitic attitudes”. As one expert MWM talked to said,

It is almost beyond belief that one-tenth of that figure would even think about Jews or the Jewish faith.

“The ADL claims 51% of Asia is antisemitic, yet in its published findings, nowhere does it report how many people were polled.”

The ADL’s report does also not divulge what questions were actually asked of those polled. All that is revealed is that a series of 11 negative tropes about Jews were put to the respondents, and they (by the tone of the ADL’s press release) were asked to rank those tropes in the absence of any context.

Push polling?

MWM’s source said, “Once again, going on the vague press releases of the ADL and Ipsos, it is possible each survey may have been conducted in less than five minutes.”

“From what’s been reported, it is possible to conclude that participants were asked questions that pushed them towards answers – a commonly used technique called ‘push polling’ where questions are asked in order to skew answers.

“The survey press release indicates negative stereotypes were put to all respondents; so, if every question is couched in negative terms, it is far more likely that a survey will produce negative responses.”

The ADL press release does not indicate any questions at all were put to respondents about the Israel-Gaza war,

nor did it advance the entirely possible theory that this war could have fed into views that would be construed as antisemitic.

Report conflates Australia’s ‘wave of antisemitism’ with Israel war critics

Racist cherry-picking

It appears this survey is deliberately conflating negative attitudes with hatred and calls to violence.

This seems an oversimplification. There is abundant evidence that physical attacks on Jewish communities in Australia are on the rise and that spray painting nazi symbols, hateful slogans, and firebombing homes and synagogues must be condemned in the strongest terms. Perpetrators of such crimes should indeed be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

However, Asian Australians were subjected to numerous hate crimes, destruction of property, verbal abuse and physical assaults during Covid. The media and politicians were not all that quick to rush to the defence of Asian, and in particular Chinese, communities, as they have now done with the Jewish community.

One reason may be that Chinese-Australians are a disorganised and divided community unable to defend their common interests, while Jewish, Israeli and Zionist lobby groups are highly organised and highly effective at delivering their message to the upper echelons of power in Australia.

Apart from an interactive map on the ADL website, there is no significant supporting data to challenge the veracity of the ADL’s claims. Instead, the survey is only supported by a 995-word press release, which most Western mainstream media, such as the AFR, accepted without question.

ADL Global Survey

ADL Global 100 antisemitism index (adl.org)

Student survey

The ADL has another survey of university campuses in the United States. It gave Ivy League schools, Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, fail on its antisemitism scale.

Aside from protests expressing solidarity with the people of Gaza, it begs the question of what parameters are being used to determine that two institutions for the brightest of all students in the US are antisemitic?

Using the methodology, the ADL applies to its surveys,

could these protests by the most intelligent students in the world’s most powerful democracy be an indicator that Israel is wrong in the way it has conducted its war with Gaza?

Furthermore, only 2.4% of the US population is Jewish, while 17% of Harvard graduates are Jews. Can we extrapolate that Jews who study at Harvard support antisemitism?

There is an old adage in politics that you never launch an inquiry without knowing its findings in advance. When it comes to lobby groups producing their own surveys, this maxim rings true. This ADL survey was always going to conclude global antisemitism is on the rise, and it sent out a sensationalist press release to promote its findings.

The ADL did not disclose what questions respondents were asked nor sample sizes from country to country, and its sweeping statement that more than one billion people in India and China are antisemites stands up to no scrutiny. Also, are there really millions and millions of Australians harbouring hatred towards our Jewish community?

Antisemitism in countries like Australia is on the rise, but one could argue that ignoring significant factors such as the Gaza war and relying on skewed ADL surveys is doing Jewish communities a disservice.

Israel’s Other War : Foreign Influence and Hasbara | The West Report

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