More than one in five Britons harbors or agrees with antisemitic views, a survey found. The numbers are the highest since similar studies began 10 years ago, The Telegraph reported on Sunday.
The findings come just before a national march by Jewish groups and their supporters in London on Sunday to protest “bigots and extremists” targeting Britain’s Jews.
The survey, conducted among a representative sample of British adults, found that 21% of the public supports four or more antisemitic statements, up from 16% last year. In 2021, that figure was 11%.
The number of British people holding antisemitic views has doubled in less than five years, to more than a fifth of the population.
The YouGov survey, commissioned by the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA), revealed that almost half of the population (45%) says that Israel treats Palestinian Arabs similar to the way Nazis treated Jews.
This surpasses last year’s record number of 33% who agreed with that statement.
The CAA said comparing Israel’s actions to those of the Nazis is “one of the most common antisemitic tropes that we see,” the Telegraph reported.
“It both trivializes the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were industrially slaughtered, and insultingly accuses victims of the crime committed against them of perpetrating it,” the CAA said.
Similar to a Harvard-Harris poll in the United States, the YouGov survey found that antisemitic attitudes were higher among younger people. Some 60% of young people accepted the view equating Israel with Nazis.
The study also found that of 18- to 24-year-olds, nearly half (49%) said they did not feel comfortable spending time around people who openly support Israel. Only 18% said they did feel comfortable doing so.
Of young voters, 31% said that Israel has a right to exist as a homeland for the Jewish people. Twenty percent said it did not.
Fifty-eight percent of young people said Israel and those who support it are a bad influence on British democracy. Among the general population, 29% agreed with that statement.
Twenty-six percent of the British public said that Israel can get away with whatever it wants because its supporters “control the media.” That figure was 18% last year. Among young people, 42% said Israel can get away with anything.
“Bearing in mind that the overwhelming majority of British Jews identify as Zionists and with the Jewish state, these attitudes among young Britons have enormous implications for young Jews on campus, on social media and starting out in the workplace,” the CAA said.
Ten percent of young Britons have a “favorable view” of Hamas, with 14% saying it is wrong to classify Hamas as a terrorist group, the survey also found.
Nineteen percent of young people said that the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in which 1,219 people, mostly civilians, were murdered according to an AFP tally based on official figures, and 251 were kidnapped, was justified.
