Editorial.

Abstract

At the heart of many violent conflicts is what I have termed mutual radicalization, when groups and nations push one another to extremes (Moghaddam, 2018). Driven by pathological hatred and a "your pain, my gain" belief system, groups entrapped in the process of mutual radicalization try to harm "the enemy" irrespective of costs to themselves. Conflicts involving mutual radicalization tend to be concentrated in certain parts of the world, particularly the Near and Middle East. Six of the eight major papers in this issue of the journal examine different aspects of the conflicts in Israel-Palestine, Turkey, and Syria. A seventh paper is on the conflict in Colombia. The role of news websites in promoting a sense of global community is explored in the eighth major paper.The studies by Sternberg, Litvak Hirsch, and Sagy (2018) and Ben Hagai, Whitlatch, and Zurbriggen (2018) present new and in some respects different perspectives on the relationship between intragroup dialogue and intergroup conflict. Both studies focus on young Jews: Ben Hagai et al. (2018) on participants in the Birthright trip, a free 10-day trip to Israel available to young Jewish Americans; Sternberg et al. ( 2018) on Jewish-Israeli undergraduate students. Whereas participants in the Birthright trip emerged from intragroup dialogues with a stronger endorsement of a "root" Jewish-Israeli narrative and a firmer rejection of the Palestinian narrative, Ben Hagai et al. ( 2018) report on a project in which intragroup dialogues led to more critical self-reflection, as well as openness to considering alternative arrangements to the present Israeli-Palestinian situation. The two types of intragroup dialogues obviously have different implications for peace-building, but common to both of them is the focus on collective narratives. The discussion by Rinker and Lawler (2018) suggests that collective processes, and more specifically what they refer to as collective trauma, deserve far more attention in peace and conflict studies.The studies by Kis ¸iog ˘lu and Cohrs (2018) and Özdemir and Sakallı Ug ˘urlu (2018) examine different aspects of Turkish identity. Turkey is one of the countries that in the second decade of the 21st century is moving away from democracy, toward being closed and authoritarian. Freedom, particularly of the press and in academia, has been severely restricted, and the independence of the judiciary has been seriously damaged. In this changing context, Kis ¸iog ˘lu and Cohrs (2018) examine social representation of Turkish nationhood. A key aspect of this nationhood is militarism, and Özdemir and Sakallı Ug ˘urlu (2018) outline a project through which they developed a valid and reliable scale to measure militaristic attitudes in the Turkish context.The last three major papers published in this issue contribute to ongoing efforts to strengthen peace-building strategies. Even in the context of the Near and Middle East, the ongoing Syrian conflict is exceptionally brutal in its impact on civilian populations. El-Khani et al. (2018) describes ...