Stereotypes and Prejudice in Conflict: Representations of Arabs in Israeli Jewish Society [Hardcover]

Daniel Bar-Tal (Author), Yona Teichman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 10, 2005

Focusing on the issue of Arab representation in the Israeli-Jewish society, this study describes the negative intergroup psychological repertoire about the enemy (Arabs) that evolves in the context of intractable conflict (Arab-Israeli conflict). This analysis is of special importance because the negative psychological intergroup repertoire feeds the continuation of the conflict, and thus, serves as a major obstacle to conflict resolution and the peace making process. The major challenge of changing the negative psychological intergroup repertoire is emphasized.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A genuine contribution to the field...I shall be citing the book often in my future writings on contact theory." Thomas F. Pettigrew, Department of Psychology, University of California, Santa Cruz

"Deals with an important issue...and presents a very impressive perspective. The approach is centrally relevant to issues here in the US, including racial stereotyping and, since 9/11, the perception of Muslims as terrorists....I'll be recommending it to both colleagues and students in the US and everywhere else." Philip A. Cowan, Professor of Psychology, University of California, Berkely

"All educators, all politicians -- in fact, everyone -- should read this book." -- Haaretz

"An intelligent, timely, and useful discussion that involves the application of basic tenets of social psychology to a real-world problem of intergroup conflict....An invaluable read for anyone who has ever wondered why intergroup conflict is so difficult to tackle and why stereotypes and prejudice are so resistant to change. Readers of this book will gain a profound understanding about the nature of intergroup conflict and change." Contemporary Psychology

"Bar-Tal and Teichman's book is the most extensive review and analysis of the recent social psychological literature on stereotypes and prejudice towards Arabs in the Israeli-Jewish society, especially among the younger generations." Israel Studies, Dan Bar-On, Ben Gurion University

"I think that Bar-Tal and Teichman were very courageous to confront the Israeli-Jewish society, mirroring to us the depth and width of our own stereotypes and prejudices towards Arabs in general and toward the Palestinians in particular, which is partially based in conflict but also partially a product of our ignorance." Israel Studies, Dan Bar-On, Ben Gurion University

"This book is the work of a lifetime. It clarifies prejudice. It can advance the peace process in the Middle East. It is of excellent scientific quality. It is socially highly relevant. It is in the heart of political psychology."
Alexander George Award Committee

"An impressive treatise on the Israeli/Palestine conflict. It should be read by scholars interested in this particular conflict and by psychologists interested in intractable conflicts." Political Psychology

Book Description

On the basis of knowledge accumulated in social, developmental, and political psychology, sociology, political science, cultural studies and communication, the book presents integrative conceptual frameworks, which are used to analyze the representation of Arabs in Israeli Jewish Society. The book, focusing on the case if Arab representation in the Israel-Jewish society, describes the negative intergroup psychological repertooire about the enemy (Arabs) that evolves in the context of intractable conflict (Arab-Israeli conflict). Then outlines how this repertoirse developed, how it is maintained, insitutionalized, and trasnmitted to a new generation. This analysis is of special importance because the negative psychological intergroupo repertoire feeds the continuation of the conflict, and thus, serves as a major obstacle to conflict resolution and peace making process. Finally, the book discusses a major challenge of how to change the negative psychological intergroup repertoire in order to embark on the road to peace and reconciliation.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 502 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (January 10, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521807972
• ISBN-13: 978-0521807975
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,698,434 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Disinterested Party, November 13, 2011

By 

Travis W. Windleharth - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Stereotypes and Prejudice in Conflict: Representations of Arabs in Israeli Jewish Society (Hardcover)

As a disinterested party, a graduate student writing a paper on a museum topic, I found some of this book quite useful. It is pretty clear that the first two reviewers are incredibly biased (one is from Jerusalem). While I don't agree with everything in the book, and agree that Arabs have tremendous stereotypes for Israelis as well, they seem to dismiss this text from an emotional vantage. The theories on in-group out-group psychology presented therein are solid, as well as psychological understanding of stereotyping.

5 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Tedious psychobabble..., January 17, 2006

By 

Jazz It Up Baby - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Stereotypes and Prejudice in Conflict: Representations of Arabs in Israeli Jewish Society (Hardcover)

Steven Plaut from the University of Haifa said: If you think stereotypes dictate and determine all human achievement and conflict; if you believe psychobabble offers the most promising way out of the Middle East conflict-then this tedious book is for you.

The authors, both professors of psychology at Tel Aviv University who have long worked on studying stereotypes, cite the enormous literature on stereotyping in general and in textbooks and the media in particular in a list of references nearly fifty pages long. Their thesis goes something like this: whatever the past causes of the Middle East conflict, today the violence and conflict are being perpetuated by the fact that stereotypes of the "other" are common, inculcated by the schools and the media.

What evidence do the authors provide? Mainly studies of drawings of Arabs made by very young Jewish children, plus some tendentious parsing of the Israeli media. This points to the real problem of Stereotypes and Prejudice in Conflict: it has a thinly-disguised political agenda and bias shows up everywhere.

Bar-Tal and Teichman offer no evidence that stereotypes affect economic achievement and success. While citing negative stereotypes about Chinese held by Americans, they omit reference to the phenomenal educational and economic success by Chinese Americans, who out-earn whites. They offer no evidence that those "reverse stereotypes" found in politically-corrected textbooks about women lumberjacks, Jewish hockey players, and Cherokee nuclear scientists have had any impact on social mobility.

The authors consider stereotypes as racist and as evidence of intolerance, never mind if they are true. That nearly all Palestinians endorse suicide bombers should not be regarded as legitimate empirical grounds for Israelis drawing conclusions about Palestinians. That almost all Israeli Arabs vote for anti-Zionist political parties with Marxist orientations should not serve as empirical evidence. The authors use "prejudice" and "stereotypes" interchangeably, but what happens when an ethnic group actually exhibits certain traits?

Far from looking at both sides, the only stereotypes that matter to these professors, citing Edward Said, are those held by Jews concerning Arabs. Discussions in the Palestinian media of Jews drinking blood for Passover, poisoning Palestinian food, spreading AIDS, etc., do not interest the authors. Not a single cartoon drawn by a Palestinian child of a Jew is included in the book. It is only Jewish stereotyping of Arabs that is an obstacle to peace, not Palestinian text books and radio stations calling for genocide of Jews. And the fact that preschoolers might hold stereotypical images about everything in their toddler world, from teachers to tricycles, has not occurred to the authors, who never examine any preschooler drawings about anything besides Arabs.

And while the learned duo parse Israeli media (which is under the near-hegemony of Israel's far-Left, by the way) and schoolbooks, they just never got around to examining which other stereotypes are inculcated there, such as those about Orthodox Jews, Jewish settlers, kibbutzniks, homosexuals, environmentalists, etc.

Most of the "findings" in the book are old hat. Other previous studies making essentially the same arguments about Israeli schoolbooks include Adir Cohen's An Ugly Face in the Mirror, articles and books by Hebrew University's Eli Podeh,[Elie Podeh, How Israeli Textbooks Portray the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1948-2000 (New York: Bergin & Garvey, 2001)] the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace,["Analysis of Israeli Textbooks," Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace, accessed June 24, 2005] and quite a few earlier articles by Bar-Tal or Teichman themselves.

The authors' bias is not surprising. While Teichman seems to be uninvolved politically, Bar-Tal is smack in the center of Israel's far Left. He joined the anti-Zionist fringe by signing his name to a political petition calling for international armed intervention to impose a settlement on Israel.["Israeli Citizens for International Intervention, List of Endorsements," Oznik.com, Apr. 27, 2001] He has justified Palestinian terrorism,[Daniel Bar-Tal, "Is There a Way Out? Occupation, Terror and Understanding," Counterpunch, Apr. 22, 2002] and his work is cited as "evidence" that Israelis are racists, including by the U.N.'s anti-Zionist report on racism and xenophobia.["Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and All Forms of Discrimination," Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, U.N. Commission on Human Rights, E/CN.4/2002/NGO/152, Feb. 18, 2002] Another indication of this study's bias: the PLO's official website sings its praises for proving how racist Israelis are.["Israeli Textbooks and Children's Literature Promote Racism and Hatred toward Palestinians and Arabs," Palestinian National Authority website, accessed July 11, 2005].

4 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A biased wrong headed text, June 15, 2005

By 

Seth J. Frantzman (Jerusalem, Israel) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Stereotypes and Prejudice in Conflict: Representations of Arabs in Israeli Jewish Society (Hardcover)

The thesis here is that every Israeli is racist and stereotypes Arabs, that these negative stereotypes create the conflict. However there is a major setback in this research. First of all it doesnt ask the question if any of the stereotyping is based on experience. It assumes all stereotyping is illogical. But what is a stereotype and why is it 'bad'? A stereotype is a beleif of a virtue about a certain group of people based on name or visual association. Let us recall that in Israel of 2153 Israeli civilian deaths by terror since the year 2000, 100% have been caused by arabs using terrorism. Does this make the stereotype of arabs as terrorists logical. According to the authors no. According to the authors one must never stereotype and the fact that a child who has seen his mother stabbed by a terrorist dares to draw a picture showing that terrorists as an arab makes the child racist. The theory of this book is that every Israeli is racist, a stereotype unto itself ironically.

The second setback of this book is that it, of course, ignores the arab stereotypes of Israel. Their are 5 million Israelis and 250 million Arabs. Every Arab also has stereotypes that lend themselves to continuing the conflict. However we dont see the arabs brought in for criticism here. This book is basically a racist text, it argues that based on someone being a Jew they are racist agianst arabs, that every Jew is born hating and that every Jew in Israel is indoctrinated to hate.

The authors never bothered to ask ther question: were not the suicide bombers also stereotyping the Israelis they kill? Does the terrorism create stereotyping? Does the terrorism also lead to continuation of the conflict. The authors are self haters who want to convince the world that Israel, their country, is evil. A sad commentary, a lesson unto itself of stereotyping.

Seth J. Frantzman





repertoire feeds the continuation of the conflict