By Morton A. Klein and Dr. Andrew Bostom
(April 18, 2025 / JNS) Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and national director of the Anti-Defamation League, boycotted the Jerusalem International Conference on Combating Antisemitism in late March to protest the event’s inclusion of so-called “far-right European politicians.” Israeli Diaspora Minister Amichai Chikli countered that the “right-wing” European party members he invited were “allies” in combating antisemitism.
A month earlier, Chikli explained the invitations, saying, “antisemitism is a growing problem in Europe due to Muslim immigration. The European right-wing parties have a point because they realize the problem and are presenting a solution. They understand the challenge of radical Islam, and they are willing to take the necessary steps.”
The ADL has a 20-year record of determining “extreme antisemitism” in different places and among different groups, and for the last 10 years, it has released findings in its “Global 100: An Index of Antisemitism.” Countries are ranked based on how many antisemitic stereotypes out of a total of 11 statements people there agree with. Those who agree that six or more statements are “probably true” are considered by the ADL report to be “harboring” antisemitic views.
Over the years, the report has included results from religious groups, including Christians and Muslims in Western Europe (such as in 2004, 2015 and 2019, and 2023). Yet that data, which shows Western European Muslims harboring significantly more antisemitic views than others in Western Europe, is now missing from the ADL’s website.
After compiling the results of ADL survey reports from 2015 to 2023, we found a grossly disproportionate, two-to-four-fold excess prevalence of Jew-hatred among the Muslims in the United Kingdom, Belgium, France, Germany, Spain and Italy.
A reported instance where statistical adjustment to remove “confounding” or bias was performed on the ADL’s Western European survey data yielded even more alarming results. Applying multivariable adjustment (controlling for country of residence, age, religion, income, gender, contact with Jews, etc.) to ADL’s 2004 survey data, Yale University educators, in the peer-reviewed The Journal of Conflict Resolution, demonstrated that Western European Muslims had an 8-fold excess risk of harboring extreme antisemitism relative to Christians.
Moreover, when the ADL released the original raw April 2004 survey data, “Attitudes toward Jews, Israel and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in 10 European countries,” no indication whatsoever was made that the survey included a Muslim sample.
We recently discovered that the attempted concealment by ADL of its own disturbing findings on the attitudes of Western European Muslims on antisemitism is an ongoing matter of grave, urgent concern.
As confirmed by the ADL in email correspondence, the ADL has scrubbed from its “Global 100” public antisemitism survey results hub any Western European demographic data by religious affiliation, including Islam, for its 2015, 2019 and 2023 results.
The timing of this removal is disquieting because the data appears to have been made completely unavailable in March, on or about the time Greenblatt decided not to attend the antisemitism conference.
The ADL justified making the data inaccessible so abruptly because, as they said in their email, “religious affiliation has proven less generalizable” compared to other demographic variables, such as education and age.” Yet this didn’t seem to be a problem before. Another alleged reason for making the religious affiliation data unavailable, the organizaiton said, was that it was awaiting the completion of “internal research and peer-reviewed analysis.”
These claims are disingenuous and ring hollow. First, there is copious independent data from Western European academic and governmental surveys that confirm ADL’s findings of excessive antisemitism within the Muslim vs. non-Muslim populations of Western Europe.
Second, as already stated, almost 20 years ago, when the ADL allowed outside investigators access to their raw data for appropriate statistical analysis and peer-reviewed publication, the Western European religious affiliation data ADL had concealed indicated Muslims were 8-fold more antisemitic than Christians.
Lastly, even after the ADL’s private correspondence acknowledging its religious affiliation purging, there is still no public explanation on the ADL Global 100 website providing examples of what the data revealed and “rationalizing” its removal.
ADL’s pattern of blatant and arbitrary censoring of its own extreme antisemitism survey index scores on Western European Muslim antisemitism is disturbing and disorienting to those trying to assess Muslim antisemitism objectively and place it into perspective. We urge the group to desist from such censorious behavior and share data openly and transparently to facilitate effective strategies that combat the modern global scourge of disproportionate Muslim antisemitism.
Andrew G. Bostom, MD, MS, is a retired Brown University academic internist and clinical epidemiologist, who is also the author of The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History, Sharia versus Freedom: The Legacy of Islamic Totalitarianism, and other books and essays on Islam. His non-medical research focus has been on the impact of Islamic conquest, colonization, and governance on non-Muslims.
Morton Klein is national President of The Zionist Organization of America. Formerly, Mr. Klein was a biostatistician working with two-time Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling at The Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine.
This op-ed was originally published in JNS and can be viewed here.