For decades, the U.S. Jewish community has invested heavily in trying to raise awareness of the Shoah, and make its history part of Jewish and general educations. Non-Jewish educators and leaders have been largely receptive to these efforts, and often embraced them wholeheartedly. Yet, according to a new in-depth survey, 23 percent of American ages eighteen through thirty-nine think it possible or likely that the Holocaust didn’t happen, or has been greatly exaggerated. And 12 percent of respondents stated that either they were not aware of the Holocaust, or weren’t sure if they had ever learned about it. Even in New York state, the results are disheartening, writes Elizabeth Rosner:

Nearly 20 percent of [those surveyed] in New York believe Jews caused the Holocaust. . . . Additionally, 60 percent of respondents in New York do not know that 6 million Jews were killed during the Holocaust. A total of 34 percent of respondents in New York believe the Holocaust happened but the number of Jews who died has been greatly exaggerated or believe the Holocaust is a myth and did not happen or are unsure.

A shocking 28 percent of respondents in New York believe it is acceptable to hold neo-Nazi views, while 62 percent have never visited a Holocaust museum in the United States.

While roughly a third of Saudis are willing to cooperate with the Jewish state in matters of technology and commerce, far fewer are willing to allow Israeli teams to compete within the kingdom—let alone support diplomatic normalization. These are just a few results of a recent, detailed, and professional opinion survey—a rarity in Saudi Arabia—that has much bearing on current negotiations involving Washington, Jerusalem, and Riyadh. David Pollock notes some others:

When asked about possible factors “in considering whether or not Saudi Arabia should establish official relations with Israel,” the Saudi public opts first for an Islamic—rather than a specifically Saudi—agenda: almost half (46 percent) say it would be “important” to obtain “new Israeli guarantees of Muslim rights at al-Aqsa Mosque and al-Haram al-Sharif [i.e., the Temple Mount] in Jerusalem.” Prioritizing this issue is significantly more popular than any other option offered. . . .

This popular focus on religion is in line with responses to other controversial questions in the survey. Exactly the same percentage, for example, feel “strongly” that “our country should cut off all relations with any other country where anybody hurts the Quran.”

By comparison, Palestinian aspirations come in second place in Saudi popular perceptions of a deal with Israel. Thirty-six percent of the Saudi public say it would be “important” to obtain “new steps toward political rights and better economic opportunities for the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.” Far behind these drivers in popular attitudes, surprisingly, are hypothetical American contributions to a Saudi-Israel deal—even though these have reportedly been under heavy discussion at the official level in recent months.

Therefore, based on this analysis of these new survey findings, all three governments involved in a possible trilateral U.S.-Saudi-Israel deal would be well advised to pay at least as much attention to its religious dimension as to its political, security, and economic ones.