Antisemitic concerns have surged from two decades ago as Jewish-Americans report increased harassment over the past year, according to a pair of Gallup polls released Monday.
The Gallup poll found that 81% of adults responding to a recent survey viewed antisemitism as a “very” or “somewhat” serious problem, up from 57% in 2003.
That included a jump from 9% to 49% of those who described anti-Jewish prejudice as “very serious,” as the share of people viewing it as a minor issue plunged to a small minority.
The polling company noted several antisemitic incidents since it last posed the question in 2003. That year, the late Democratic Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman campaigned to become the first Jewish major-party presidential nominee.
“In recent years, a number of crimes and rhetoric targeting Jewish Americans have sparked public concern and discussion about antisemitism,” Jeffrey M. Jones, a Gallup senior editor, wrote in a summary of the findings.
Mr. Jones pointed to shootings at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018 and a Poway, California, synagogue in 2019.
He also cited an Anti-Defamation League report showing a spike in antisemitic incidents on college campuses and at public gatherings since the Islamist militant group Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, sparking an ongoing military reprisal operation in Gaza that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians and fighters.
The poll found that just 33% of survey participants viewed prejudice against Muslims as a “very serious” problem, compared to the 49% who said the same about antisemitism.
Nevertheless, a combined 74% described anti-Muslim bias as “somewhat” or “very” serious, closer to the 81% who said the same about antisemitism,
The polling company noted that most Republican participants and adults 50 and older described antisemitism as very serious. By comparison, fewer than half of Democrats and younger Americans felt the same way, with slightly more Democrats expressing concern about anti-Muslim bias than antisemitism.
In the second survey released Monday, 46% of Jewish adults reported experiencing more religious harassment or mistreatment over the past year, higher than other religious groups. By comparison, 10% of all adults said they experienced such treatment.
Additionally, 60% of Jews expressed reluctance to share their faith with others for fear of being harassed, compared to less than half of other religious groups and 25% of all adults. Other groups surveyed included Protestants, Catholics and Mormons, but not Muslims.
Gallup conducted randomized national telephone interviews on religious prejudice with 1,024 adults on May 1-23 and self-administered web surveys with 46,933 members of its panel about their personal experiences on May 1-15.
The margins of error were plus or minus 4 percentage points for the telephone survey and 1 percentage point for the web survey, including plus or minus 3 percentage points for a weighted sample of Jewish adults.
• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.
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