Poll: Anti-semitism Is Rising
Wednesday June 12, 2002 12:10 PM
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NEW YORK (AP) - A new survey has found that 17 percent of Americans hold ``hardcore'' anti-Semitic views - a rise from four years ago - while another 35 percent fall into a ``middle'' category defined as faint prejudice against Jews.
``The evidence suggests that a strong undercurrent of Jewish hatred persists in America,'' said Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, which released the survey Tuesday.
The findings are based on an ``index of anti-Semitic beliefs'' used by researchers in four previous surveys over the past 35 years. The survey measured bias by the number of affirmative answers to 11 questions, including, ``Do you believe Jews have too much power in the United States?''
In 1992, the same survey found that 20 percent of Americans fell into the hardcore anti-Semitic category. That had fallen to 12 percent in 1998.
The survey deemed 48 percent of the country prejudice-free, down from 53 percent in 1998.
``We are greatly concerned that many of the gains we had seen in building a tolerant and accepting America have not taken hold as firmly as we had hoped and have, to some degree, been reversed,'' Foxman said.
The national survey, conducted from April 26 through May 6, polled 1,000 Americans over age 18. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
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