Emotional Barriers: Jewish Reactions to Anti-Palestinian Racism in Israel

In the last decades researchers have extended our understanding of racism and the suffering of the individual lives in societies characterized by institutional racism. However, most research has focused on the negative consequences for minorities. Only a handful of researchers have tried to understand the impact of privilege on the psychology of majorities. 

The study suggests a new model for understanding the development of empathy, guilt, and fear among Israeli-Jews towards the racial experience of Palestinian-Arabs in Israel. Two approaches inform this paper's conceptualization: 1) Psychological Costs of Racism to Whites (PCRW), which assumes that empathy, guilt and fear correlate with racial attitudes and 2)  the Dual-Process-Model (DPM), which maintains that racial attitudes are caused by high social dominance orientation (SDO), and right wing authoritarian (RWA). 

We combine these two models with the assumption that the relationship between RWA, SDO and the emotional reactions (empathy, guilt and fear) will be mediated along two paths. 

The mediation path consists of different dimensions of racial attitudes: color blind racial attitudes (CoBRAS), prejudice and perception of Palestine-Arabs as a group.

553 Jewish-Israeli university students participated in an online and printed survey designed to develop and test a new model of the determinants of empathy, guilt, and fear. Although we use a convenience sample, it is representative of the total student population in Israel.

Structural-equations modeling makes possible a comprehensive view of the three responses to racism. In light of the findings, an alternative theoretical model with a better fit is provided.

The results show that the level of pre-existing RWA and SDO shape the emotional response. These two factors are mediated by racial attitudes through two different mediation paths: support of RWA is mediated by a lower awareness of racism, while CoBRAS are not part of the axis of support for SDO. We attribute this difference to the characteristics individuals who supports RWA versus those who supports SDO.

The results contribute to the growing body of knowledge on the psychological costs of racism to the majority members. RWA and SDO, along with racial attitudes, and the perception of the Palestine-Arabs as a group, permit Israeli-Jews to preserve their moral self-perception, while simultaneously increasing their fear of Palestine-Arabs.

Our research has implications for theoretical claims regarding racism as a process rather than a static phenomenon. We suggest regarding our model as a feedback loop. In this type of model each factor can be, at different times, both cause and effect. A positive feedback loop can cause more fear and less empathy, more denial and less awareness, more conformity and less independent thinking. 

Our main recommendation focuses on the awareness of racism: informing the majority group members about the life experiences of Palestinian-Arabs. We recommend developing educational programs for the training of social workers and intervention programs for social workers who operate in the Jewish community. The focus of these programs is to offer an alternative to the distorted picture of Palestinians that predominates in the mass media and among the general public.