Jewish-Arab Violence: Perspectives of a Dominant Majority and a Subordinate Minority

Abstract

In 2 studies, the authors investigated intergroup violence as perceived by Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs. University and junior high school students judged Jewish-Arab clashes, which ended in shots fired at a crowd of either Jewish or Arab demonstrators. The authors hypothesized that judgments of these shootings would be contingent on 3 variables: the origin of the respondent, the origin of the shooter, and the level of danger to the shooter. The results tended to support those hypotheses: (a) Both Jewish and Arab respondents justified shootings by members of their own group more readily than those by members of the other group. (b) Jewish judgments of violence were associated more closely than Arab judgments with the danger that the demonstrators posed to the shooter. (c) The Jewish respondents referred to self-defense more often than did the Arab respondents to justify their judgments, whereas the Arab respondents referred more often to intergroup considerations. Those differences may reflect the disagreement between the majority and the minority on the issue that each group should take into consideration in cases of international violence.

Strategies of Constructing Social Identities in conflict‐Ridden Areas: The Case of Young Jews, Arabs and Palestinians

“…As people identify with more than one group, a conflict may occur between collective identities and the value systems they represent. In each society, the conflict will be based on the specific diversifying issues prevalent in that society, but the consequences are the same: people will have to choose among specific identities that the categorisation leads to, thus limiting identification to non-conflicting groups (Eshel and Moran 2002). In many societies, such avoidance is impossible (for example, the Palestinian citizens of Israel may see themselves as both Palestinians and Israeli (Suleiman 2002).…”

Ethos of conflict as the prism to evaluate the Northern Irish and the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts by the involved societies: A comparative analysis.

“…Given the body of research on the misperceptions and biases associated with international conflict (e.g., Jervis, 1988), intractable conflict (e.g., Eshel & Moran, 2002) and intergroup conflict (e.g., Hastorf & Cantril, 1954), it is surprising to note that there has been very little comparative research that examines whether and how involvement in one conflict impacts views of other conflicts, as a result of an ideological orientation. Small scale studies by Moore and Heskin (1983) and Moore and Tyson (1990) tested hypotheses drawn from balance theory (Heider, 1958) to predict differential support for groups in conflict in the Middle East, Northern Ireland and South Africa by students living in these conflict zones and peers from Australia and America respectively.…”