With the rise of antisemitism around the world, it may surprise many Jews, Israelis included, that they are actually looked upon favorably by a majority in the non-Muslim world.
Paradoxically, Jews are viewed as one of the most liked and most hated people in the world. Generally, the haters are a loud but small minority, though they impact the leaders of their countries and the media.
The selection of Israeli basketball player Deni Avdija of the Portland Trail Blazers to the NBA All-Star Game on Feb. 15 in California was partly due to his strong support among fan voting, in which he finished fifth among Western Conference NBA players. With the coaching and player voting, he finished seventh among all Western Conference.
Representing “Team World,” he was selected as a reserve, marking the first time an Israeli player has earned this honor.
While the 25-year-old didn’t make the starting line-up (fan voting accounts for 50% of the vote), he did get in some time on the court. Avdija played a total of 15 minutes across two round-robin matches.
The fact that an Israeli player who has received significant negative comments via social media and elsewhere could receive such strong popular support in fan voting shows that antisemites aren’t as numerous as they may seem.
A 2025 national poll conducted by the University of Maryland’s Critical Issues Poll team, led by Shibley Telhami, found that about 85 % of Americans view Jews positively and 76% view Judaism positively. It did find that those who view Jews least favorably of all demographics were among youth, which is a major factor why so many incidents occur on college campuses. It’s similar to the 2015 Pew poll that found a positive view of Jews among 89% of Americans.
As to the belief that Americans view Israeli Jews much better than Europeans, a similar fan voting system has long been in place for the Eurovision Song Contest, which began in 1956 in Lugano, Switzerland. In it, European countries and a few non-European countries send a singer to compete with an original song. Voting consists of 50% of fans voting and 50% of a vote by five music-industry professionals (called the jurors) from each participating country.
In May 2024, a year after the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, Eden Golan, just 20 years old, represented Israel in the Eurovision competition. Among fan voting, she finished second. As part of the post-Oct. 7 backlash, jurors gave her few points, and she wound up finishing fifth overall.
In May 2025, Yuval Raphael, a survivor of the Nova music site massacre on Oct. 7 (who hid under dead bodies to survive), finished first among public voting by a large margin, with 297 public points, as compared to the Austrian candidate, who got 178 public points but came out the victor as a result of juror voting. Raphael, 24, won the popular vote over competitors in Belgium, Switzerland, France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Azerbaijan, Australia and Luxembourg.
Among the jurors, she ranked 14th and finished second overall. Jurors who gave her 0 points—meaning, they did not rank her in the top 12—were the United Kingdom, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Spain, Switzerland and Australia. Despite their own populations ranking her first. There was no similar disparity among any other competitors in the voting.
Iceland, Ireland, Spain, Slovenia and the Netherlands have announced that they are boycotting this year’s competition, protesting the European Broadcasting Union’s decision to allow participation by Israel. It will be interesting to see if the populations of these countries agree with that, as Eurovision remains quite popular among the average viewer.
Considering the anti-Jewish backlash in the world, it would seem that the only hope Israeli Jews would have had in such competitions would be if the non-fan voting were much more favorable, with the expectation that they would do poorly in fan voting. The fact that this situation is the opposite shows that Israelis and Jews worldwide have more support than realized. It also shows how a loud cultural boycott from a minority does not represent the larger majority of positive thinking when it comes to the Jewish state.
The goal is to better use that support to influence foreign policies and actions, especially of European governments.
