Almost 50 per cent of newly-arrived young Austrian Muslim migrants hold anti-Semitic views, a new study published by the University of Teacher Education in Vienna reveals.
Der Standard newspaper reports that a recent poll asked Austrian Muslim students if they felt that “Jews have too much influence in Austria.” Almost 48 per cent answered in the affirmative. Those surveyed had migrant backgrounds representing a diverse set of Muslim-majority countries such as Syria as well as Muslim-minority countries including Bosnia, Albania, and Bulgaria.
The result follow another study published 12 months ago that showed a record number of anti-Semitic incidents across the country, ranging from verbal and online threats to assaults. Austria’s Jewish community stands at just 13,000-15,000 in an overall population of 8.8 million.
The authors of the latest study, Georg Lauss and Stefan Schmid-Heher, told Der Standard that “educational and prevention efforts against anti-Semitism need to be strengthened.”
Der Standard warned of the need to confront anti-Semitism among Muslim immigrants, writing the “refugee movement, where people from Syria, Iraq and Iran came to Austria, and in whose countries hostility toward Jews was politically cultivated” helps explain Jew-hatred.
As Breitbart London has reported, anti-Semitic incidents in Austria grew by 82 per cent between 2014 and 2015, Jewish community group Israelitischen Kultusgemeinde (IKG) revealed. Their report was collated by the non-governmental organisation ‘Forum Gegen Antisemitismus’ (Forum Against Anti-Semitism), a report in the European Jewish Press showed.
At the same time, the number of Jews leaving Europe for Israel has been slowly increasing for the last 15 years, but in 2014 the number doubled, and in 2015 it rose again. Meanwhile the number of French Jews in London is now so great that in January, 2016 the Liberal Jewish Synagogue in St. John’s Wood began offering services in French.
Daniel Schwammenthal, director of the Brussels-based Transatlantic Institute, has previously commented on rising levels of anti-Semitism in Europe: “You know something has gone awfully wrong when you get phone calls from friends and family in Israel who are worried about your personal safety in Europe’s capital.”
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