with the claim.
Meanwhile, nearly 65 percent of survey respondents said they strongly agree or agree with the statement that Jews treat Palestinians the exact same way as Germans treated them during the Second World War. A similar percentage said they strongly agree or agree with the claim that Jews have exploited the Holocaust. Also 70 percent said they strongly agree or agree with the statement that Greeks have suffered worse genocides than the Jews.
Following its own recent study, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) defined 69 percent of Greeks as anti-Semitic, on a par with Saudi Arabia and more so than Iran.
According to the Greek study, anti-Semitic views are more intense among supporters of the neofascist Golden Dawn and right-wing populist Independent Greeks parties.
“Quite surprisingly however we found hardly any discrepancy between all other parties, measuring almost equal levels of anti-Semitism among supporters of conservative New Democracy, leftist SYRIZA and the Greek Communist Party (KKE),” said Dinas, a political scientist at Oxford University. Levels of anti-Semitism were found to be slightly lower among voters of socialist coalition partner PASOK and centrist newcomer To Potami (The River).
The researchers said they have not at this stage tried to interpret the causes of anti-Semitism in Greece, but merely to gauge sentiment.
However, Antoniou said, early data suggest that people with a higher level of education were less likely to hold anti-Semitic views.
“The lower one’s level of education, the earlier they have left school, the more likely they are to believe in conspiracy and anti-Semitic theories,” Antoniou said. “Meanwhile, the quality of education here leaves a lot to be desired,” he said.
Despite the fact that anti-Semitic views are held by a large percentage of the population, Antoniou said, “instances of anti-Semitism have been rather isolated or minor.”
The study, published under the title “Exploring Anti-Semitic Attitudes among the Greek Public: Evidence from a Representative Survey,” was carried out between June 23 and 27 on a random sample of 1,045 people.
About half of the telephone interviews were conducted shortly after Greece’s FIFA World Cup last-gasp win over Ivory Coast on June 24 in Brazil, a result which put the country’s national team through to the knockout stage of the tournament. Interestingly, researchers noted that respondents’ ethnocentric and nationalist sentiments were on average higher after the match, while indications of anti-Semitism had declined.
“It seems likely that this occurred because people’s sense of victimhood also decreased after the game. Typical ‘underdog’ feelings declined while Greeks’ self-confidence as a nation increased,” Dinas said.
“As a result, they felt less inclined to either endorse conspiratorial theories or consider the Greeks as having suffered more than the Jews,” he said.
The survey was carried out before Israel launched its offensive on July 8 to stop Hamas rocket fire out of Gaza. More than 750 Palestinians, most of them civilians, and 32 Israelis, 29 of them soldiers, have died so far in the conflict.
Experts said that the longstanding unpopularity of Israeli policies in Greece has forged an unexpected consensus across the political spectrum.
“It often becomes hard to maintain sensitivity on the Palestinian issue without at the same time taking on the world’s entire Jewish population,” Antoniou said.
“In this environment, it is difficult to distinguish between legitimate political opposition to Israeli actions and anti-Semitism,” he said.