A new survey conducted by the American Jewish Committee on Jewish and non-Jewish Americans revealed a stark level of ignorance when it comes to anti-Semitism awareness among the U.S. general public.
According to the survey, “The State of Antisemitism in American 2020,” which surveyed 1,010 non-Jewish adults between Sept. 15-20, 2020, some 46 percent of Americans are “unsure” or have “never heard of the term” anti-Semitism.
“This is stunning. Notably, there is a correlation with levels of education. More than a third of adults who have a high school education or less (36 percent) said they have never heard the word anti-Semitism,” Holly Huffnagle, U.S. director for Combating Antisemitism, told JNS.org
“Education in American schools is imperative. The more Americans know about anti-Semitism and its dark history, the better prepared they will be to counter it,” she said.
The survey, which also separately polled 1,334 adult U.S. Jews from Sept. 9 to Oct. 4, 2020, also found a stark disagreement between how Jews and non-Jews about whether anti-Semitism has increased.
While eight in 10 American Jews (82 percent) say anti-Semitism has increased in the past five years, only four in 10 members of the general public (43 percent) believe that it has escalated.
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