Survey finds significant antisemitism among hiring managers

Post Reply New Topic

There may be something to this. My son is a surgeon at a hospital in a large Midwestern city. He's Jewish, but you wouldn't know unless he told you. He trained for years in Baltimore. He told us that where he works now, he sometimes encounters expressions of casual antisemitism unlike anything he ever saw in Baltimore. I really have no idea why this should be. The area he’s in is very urban and diverse.

This is an Israeli survey about the US. Maybe it's an American thing? Americans seem to be a lot into indentifying themselves as "Irish Americans", "Italian Americans"or "Jewish Americans" and do a lot of bonding around that while at the same time keeping track on everybody elses backgrounds as well. The US is also an extremely strong supporter of Israel. Maybe that's the cause to why some people in the survey have these ideas of "jewish power and influence"? Here in Europe people in general have no idea, and don't care, if someone is Jewish or not unless they are part of some orthodox group living outside society. The European countries in general also have a more balanced view on Israel with leading politicians critizing it's politics when needed.

Very small sample but when I first started this thread a little over a year ago most who responded were either cynical or completely disbelieving of the survey results. Since MaxE restarted this conversation the survey results have not been disputed. I do think our tiny sample is representative of more awareness of the scope of the problem because while antisemitism was a pretty big item in the news then it is at a completely different level now.

In a post back then I wrote about main subtypes of antisemitism and did discuss blowback from events in the mideast. Looking back on it what I would change is my statement that that the blowback was solely from Americans with background from that region and people from that region living here.

Personal Note:
Here on Long Island I have encountered only very occasional expressions of stereotypes in the last couple of decades. They have in the form of the expressions of “Jew You Down”, “Jewish Lightning” (torching property for the purpose of collecting insurance), and similar to what autistics have described assumptions of unusually high intelligence. Nothing has been different locally since the war broke out. People who know I am Jewish wished me a happy Hanukkah. No vandalism so far. This is a far cry from growing up the 60s in the 70s when I was called k*e more times then I care to remember any my synagogue was “decorated” with swastikas on most Jewish holidays.

Important caveats back then I was not 66 years old nor had physical disabilities. Then as now most “haters” did not mess with people in my demographic. I am pretty sure that if I was in my 20s or 30s sans disabilities with typical amount of socialization I would have run into “situations” in the last few years, especially since 10/7.

I mostly disagree. While I do believe we identify with our backgrounds more here antisemitism has been endemic in Europe for centuries. One could go back to the Spanish Inquisition in the 1400s and The ‘Merchant of Venice’ in the 1500s. The uber text of modern antisemitism ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ came out of Russia. And need I mention Nazi Germany and their enthusiastic accomplices in the counties they conquered?

Moving on to this century America has been recently catching up to Europe as far as open antisemitic incidents are concerned. While anti zionism is not antisemitism there are connections. I do not think it is a coincidence that antisemitism is rising in America at a time when it is becoming somewhat more acceptable to be anti zionist(there is still a palpable risk of not being hired, fired, and defunded for being openly anti zionist in America that I do not believe exists in Europe) because people who hate Jews have become more emboldened about it, or found that being anti zionist is a more acceptable/coded way of expressing their hate. Also fury at images out of Gaza are leading people who are not anti Jewish into tone deafness.

I would be very remiss if I did not mention an important factor that began in America, the Trump phenomenon. I need to point out that a good percentage of MAGA’s do not hate Jews but that his language has been taken as a signal by Jew haters. Unfortunately the Trump phenomenon spread to Europe under the guise of political parties described as “far right” or “nationalist”. But their successes would not have happened to nearly the degree that it has if antisemitism was not deeply embedded in the various European cultures.

Last edited by ASPartOfMe on 28 Dec 2023, 3:25 pm, edited 4 times in total.

It sickens me to think that crap like this is still happening in late 2023.

Clearly they did not survey people hiring for accounting, auditing, bookkeeping or financial controller roles..

So there wasn't any antisemitism in the US in the 1400's? How could it be when the US wasn't founded until 1776? But, maybe some of these old time antisemitic people are the forefathers to people that in later days moved to america and brought these ideas with them? I think "Europe is being more antisemitic than the US" is just a myth that some Americans tell themselves to explain the different view on Israel.