“The number of serious acts of violence and the degree of anti-Semitic prejudices are essentially unrelated,” our Research Affiliate Andras Kovacs said to Telex.hu, referring to the results of a survey conducted in 16 countries.
The research, initiated by the Action and Protection League and carried out by the polling companies Ipsos and Inspira, aimed to provide a comprehensive picture of anti-Semitic prejudice in the European Union and to “explore the prevalence and intensity of anti-Jewish prejudices in European societies, this necessary but not sufficient precondition for the development of anti-Semitism as worldview and political ideology.”
“In a number of countries with high levels of anti-Semitic prejudices, such as Hungary, Romania and Slovakia, a negligible number of acts of violence have been registered. However, many anti-Semitic atrocities - attacks, harassment and vandalism - occur in countries with low rates of anti-Semitic prejudices, such as France, the United Kingdom and Germany,” said Andras Kovacs who led the project.
The research confirmed a rarely examined correlation: the ranking of countries on the Human Development Index by the United Nations is strongly related to the prejudices measured in them: the more developed a country is according to the indicator, the lower its anti-Semitic prejudice.