European Union leaders are systematically ignoring antisemitic views held by their citizens, a new report presented to the Israeli government today warns.

More than 40 per cent of people in the EU agreed with the claim that Israelis were behaving like the Nazis, according to six different studies conducted mostly in Germany but including eight other countries.

The Coordination Forum for Countering Antisemitism, an Israeli state body, said in its 2015 report that "the interpretation of these findings is that more than 150 million of the 400 million EU citizens, aged over 16, are holding views that are classified as antisemitic."

Leaders of the EU and its member states "systematically ignore this issue," it declared.

Radical Islam had become the "central generator of antisemitism in Europe", the CFCA report stated, and last year was characterised by an esclation in the number of attacks on Jewish targets by "Islamic sources".

Social networks continued to be the central medium for spreading hatred against Jews.

The delegitimisation campaign against Israel carried "clear antisemitic expressions and represents the trend of blurring the lines between criticism of Israel and antisemitism".

While the influx of refugees into Europe did not pose an antisemitic in itself, it was leading to a rise in activity among xenophobic far-right groups, the report warned.