The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a major Jewish-American organization, says Iran is the least anti-Semitic country in the Middle East.
A worldwide survey conducted by ADL shows that Iran is very anti-Semitic by global standards, but ADL went out of its way to point out that Iran displays less anti-Semitism than any other Middle Eastern country.
However, there were a few other majority-Muslim countries with lower indicators of anti-Semitism than Iran. But the ADL did not highlight that the way it highlighted Iranian anti-Semitism compared to the Arab Mideast.
The survey queried people in 102 countries with 88 percent of the world’s adult population. It asked them if they agreed or disagreed with 11 statements about Jews such as, “Jews have too much power in the business world,” “Jews are responsible for most of the world’s wars,” “Jews have too much control over global affairs,” and “Jews don’t care what happens to anyone but their own kind.” People were asked if those statements were “probably true” or “probably false.”
The responses to those queries were used to rank countries as to the degree of anti-Semitism present in each country. On every one of the 11 statements, fewer Iranians agreed with them than did Arabs in 12 Middle Eastern countries. Perhaps not surprisingly, the most anti-Semitic part of the world according to this survey was Palestine (the West Bank and Gaza).
A person was rated as anti-Semitic if he or she said that at least six of the 11 statements were probably true. A person finding five of the statements to be “probably true” was not rated as an anti-Semitic.
Globally, 26 percent of those queried were rated as anti-Semitic. In the English-speaking countries, the total was 13 percent. In the Middle East and North Africa region, the average was 74 percent with the West Bank and Gaza at a global high of 93 percent but Iran at 56 percent.
However, in Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country, the proportion of anti-Semites was 48 percent. Other majority Muslim countries with proportions less than in Iran were Azerbaijan (37 percent), Bosnia (32 percent) and Kazakhstan (also 32 percent).