A Globalized Conflict: European Anti-Jewish Violence during the Second Intifada

The globalization of the Arab–Israeli conflict during the period of the second intifada against Israel (from the autumn 2000 through at least the spring of 2005) has fostered anti-Jewish violence in Europe and throughout the world. With this globalized conflict as a context, this paper explores the effects of four explanatory factors on counts of anti-Jewish violence in 10 European countries. These factors are the relative sizes of a country’s Jewish and Muslim populations; how interpretations of the events in the Middle East mobilize the perpetrators; the unresponsiveness of bystanders; and the ambivalence of ordinary Europeans. Poisson multilevel models of the effects of these social structural and attitudinal variables suggest that all four factors contribute to violence. The violence counts include major attacks like shootings, knifings, bombings, and arson; and major violent incidents like vandalism and physical aggression without the use of a weapon. The views expressed in this paper are my own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of any organization to which I may be affiliated. I wish to thank Greg Maney and other reviewers of earlier versions of this paper for their helpful comments and Philip Gibbs of the SAS Institute for clarifying aspects of GLIMMIX.