anti-semitism or a good thing?

According to a report in The Times of Israel, a poll conducted in Europe by the Pew Research Center had some interesting results. When asked "Would you be willing to accept Jews as members of your family?", Italy and the United Kingdom had the highest percentage of respondents saying no.

Italy came in at the top with 25% of respondents saying no to having Jews as family members, while the UK came in second place at 23%. Surprisingly, to me at least, the Netherlands came in with the highest percentage of acceptance with 96% of respondents saying they would accept Jews as members of their family.

While some are pointing to this as a sign of anti-semitism and decrying such sentiments, I say otherwise. I say good. I say the numbers aren't high enough. We Jews should not be intermarrying, and the non-Jews not wanting to marry Jews can only help us keep intermarriage numbers down, though obviously it isn't helping enough right now. And just like many of the non-Jews clearly don't want to marry us, many of us don't want to marry them.

And from a more objective perspective I might say that a poll showing that 25% or 23% of a European country not wanting Jewish family members is far from a sign of anti-semitism. I suspect that 50 years ago, 70 years ago, 100 years ago, those percentages were likely far higher, so, sadly, those percentages are probably going down fast.

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