World
European study shows 10 per cent of people don’t want Jews in their countries
States which had large Jewish communities before the Holocaust more likely to reject Jews as citizens now
May 11, 2017 10:57
States which had large Jewish communities before the Holocaust more likely to reject Jews as citizens now
May 11, 2017 10:57More than 10 per cent of central and eastern Europeans do not want Jews as citizens of their countries, according to a new report.
The study, carried out by the Pew Research Centre, found that while 80 per cent of people surveyed would accept Jews as fellow citizens, the rest were not sure or declined to answer.
Less than half from the 18 countries surveyed would accept Jews as family and fewer than three quarters said they were happy to have them as neighbours.
The study, entitled Religious Belief and National Belonging in Central and Eastern Europe, found that Jews were a lot less popular in some countries than others.
In Armenia a third of respondents said Jews should not be citizens.
Countries which had large Jewish populations before the Holocaust were more likely not to want Jews as citizens.
Lithuanians surveyed were against the idea at 23 per cent, while in Romania 22 per cent said they did not want Jews as citizens.
In the Czech Republic the figure was 19 per cent, and in Poland, 18 per cent.
Respondents from more educated backgrounds were more likely to accept Jews as family, neighbours and citizens, researchers found.
The study, released on Wednesday, interviewed between 1,500 to 2,500 residents in each of the countries from June 2015 to July 2016.
The other countries surveyed included Greece, Georgia, Ukraine, Russia, Croatia and Hungary.
Meanwhile in Russia a television channel has broadcast a news item on the Rothschild family containing classic antisemitic tropes and Nazi propaganda.
The segment, which was appeared on Channel 1 and was narrated in Russian, paints the famous Jewish banking dynasty as an international cabal.
The item, which aired on April 7, suggests the Rothschild are part of a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world.
It makes reference to a Nazi propaganda movie about Nathan Rothschild in 19th century England and describes it as one of “dozens of documentaries and several feature films… made about this family.”
It said the Nazi movie was “one of the first of these films, shot back in 1940 in Germany, at the UFA film studios”.
Media watchdog MEMRI criticised the broadcast for its lack of explicit reference to the Nazi party as “unusual in public broadcasts on Russian media”.
It also showed an antisemitic cartoon depicting a female pig marked with a Star of David and the word “Rothschild” feeding six piglets.
The cartoon, with the piglets individually labelled to represent MI6, ISIS, Al-Qaeda, CIA, Israel, and Boko Haram, is referred to as a “typical modern caricature”.
