LONDON, November 2 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - A yet-to-be published European Commission poll of 7,500 Europeans describes Israel as "the top threat to world peace", according to leaked results of the poll carried out by Spanish and British papers.

Expectedly, the results of the poll - conducted in October - drew fire from Israel and major Jewish groups worldwide.

The survey of 500 people from each of the European Union's member nations included a list of 15 countries with the question, 'tell me if in your opinion it presents or not a threat to peace in the world'.

Spanish daily El Pais reported that 59 percent of Europeans rate Israel as the most threatening country, ahead of the United States, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and North Korea.

The results appear to be a mark of the widespread disapproval in Europe of the tactics employed by the Israeli government of Ariel Sharon during the Intifada, reported the Guardian.

The full results of the survey for the European Commission will be published Monday, November 3.

The poll results already sparked a major backlash Sunday, with the usual charges of anti-Semitism.

Israeli Diaspora Affairs Minister Nathan Sharansky said the survey was proof that anti-Semitism lay behind political criticism of Israel.

"The European Union, which shows sensitivity on human rights issues, would do well to stop the rampant brainwashing against and demonizing of Israel before Europe deteriorates once again to dark sections of its past," he told Yediot Aharonot newspaper Sunday.

Israeli government spokesman Avi Pazner, a former ambassador to Paris and Rome, claimed the poll lacked credibility for "lumping Israel together with such states".

He further blamed "Israel's negative image in European minds" on " negative reporting during the three-year-old Palestinian Intifada.

"I think the press coverage over the last three years has been unfair and unbalanced and has given a generally distorted picture of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict," Pazner told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

A leading U.S. Jewish lobby group had denounced the E.U. poll as "shocking" and "anti-Semitic".

The Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center described the survey as "defying logic" and 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 center'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," he added.

"That only shows that anti-Semitism is deeply embedded within European society, more then any other period since the end of WWII."

Rabbi Hier said that if the results of the survey were true, Israel should exclude the European Union from the Middle East peace process.