German study: over 50% of Muslim refugees hold anti-semitic views

Via The Jerusalem Post (Benjamin Weinthal):

More than half the asylum seekers in Bavaria subscribe to classic antisemitic views about Jewish power, according to a poll released last week. 

The study, conducted by the Hanns Seidel foundation – a think tank affiliated with the Christian Social Union party in the southern state of Bavaria, polled nearly 800 refugees during 2016 from the Bavarian cities of Nuremberg, Poing und Pliening. Their countries of origin are Syria, Eritrea, Iraq and Afghanistan.  

“More than half of Muslim asylum seekers showed clear tendencies of an antisemitic attitude pattern,” wrote the authors of the 201-page study examined by The Jerusalem Post. 

When asked by the investigators if “Jews have too much influence in the world,” 52% of Syrians said yes, while 53% of Iraqis agreed with the statement. Nearly 60% of Afghans said Jews wield too much influence, while a mere 5.4% of those from Eritrea – a Christian-majority country – held antisemitic views. Some Eritreans said they were familiar with Jews from the Bible. 

The number of Germans who affirmed the antisemitic statement about Jewish influence was 20%. In April, however, a new German government report revealed 40% of the German public hold a modern antisemitic view: the hatred of Israel. 

The Seidel study said “the decisive factor that explains antisemitic opinions is one’s religious group. Antisemitism in all age groups and educational background of Muslim asylum seekers,” is anchored in the educational system of the refugees’ countries of origin. A Syrian refugee named Mustafa said that “In Syria we were taught to hate a Jews a little bit. The government presented Jews as bad [people] who kill...” 

According to the study, there are “emotional prejudices against Israeli families from the side of the refugees.”

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