LOS ANGELES, Nov 1: A leading US Jewish lobby group on Friday denounced as “shocking” and “antisemitic” a poll indicating that 60 per cent of Europeans felt Israel was a greater threat to world peace than North Korea, Iran or Afghanistan.

The influential Simon Wiesenthal Center said the European Commission poll of around 7,500 people across the continent, scheduled to be made public on Monday, defied logic and was a “racist flight of fantasy”.

“This poll is an indication that Europeans have bought in, ‘hook, line and sinker’, to the vilification and demonization campaign directed against the State of Israel and her supporters by European leaders and media,” said the centre’s founder and dean, Rabbi Marvin Hier.

“These shocking results that Israel is the greatest threat to world peace, bigger than North Korea and Iran, defies logic and is a racist flight of fantasy,” said the head of the Los Angeles-based group.

“That only shows that antisemitism is deeply embedded within European society, more then any other period since the end of WWII.”

The results of the poll were reported on Friday by the Paris-based International Herald Tribune newspaper, but no further details were available.

Those polled were presented with a list of 15 countries and asked to pick which ones represented a threat to world peace. Some 59 per cent picked Israel, the paper said quoting a European Commission official. —AFP