Survey: Many Eastern European Countries Reject Jews as Citizens

Sizeable minorities of Central and Eastern Europeans say they would not want Jews as citizens in their countries, according to a new survey.

Data from the Pew Research Institute published Wednesday found that a significant portion of the population surveyed rejected Jews, and that countries with large Jewish populations prior to the Holocaust registered higher overall levels of anti-Jewish sentiment.

Pew conducted the survey from June 2015 to July 2016 through face-to-face interviews in 17 languages with more than 25,000 adults ages 18 and older. The survey spans an area running eastward from the Czech Republic and Poland to Russia, Georgia and Armenia, and southward from the Baltic States to the Balkans and Greece.

It surveyed residents of 18 countries, finding less than 50 per cent of respondents indicated they would accept having Jewish family members.

Anti-Jewish sentiment varied between different countries, with some nationalities more pre-disposed than others to open hostility to members of the Jewish faith. A third of Armenians polled in the study said Jews should not be citizens, significantly higher than the median anti-Jewish sentiment measured in other countries.

Countries with large Jewish populations prior to the Holocaust registered higher levels of anti-Jewish sentiment, including Lithuania (23 per cent), Romania (22 per cent), the Czech Republic (19 per cent) and Poland (18 per cent).

The latest figures follow reports of Jews fleeing Europe to re-establish their lives in Israel or the UK and U.S. because of anti-Semitism.

As Breitbart Jerusalem reported, Jewish migration to Israel has doubled in the last two years, with many more opting to flee to America and even Britain in the wake of a rise in anti-Semitic attacks in mainland Europe. The ongoing exodus of French Jews alone comprises the largest trans-migration of Jews since the formation of Israel in 1948, with  some 8,000 heading for the Jewish State in 2015.

The Campaign Against Antisemitism has said that this is not just a problem for Jews, but for the whole of European society. It issued this  chilling warning in 2016: “The Islamists and Nazis attacking Europe’s Jews hate you too. History shows us time and again – hate that starts with the Jews never ends with the Jews.”

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