Echoes of Violent Conflict: The Effect of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict on Hate Crimes in the U.S.

Abstract

Do social identity ties facilitate the spread of violent conflict? We assess whether the Israeli-Palestinian conflict causes hate crime towards Jews and Muslims in the U.S using daily data between 2000-2016. We measure the timing, intensity and instigator in the conflict using the number of conflict fatalities and U.S. mass media coverage of the conflict. Analyses using both conflict measures find that conflict events trigger hate crimes in the following days following a retaliatory pattern: Anti-Jewish hate crimes increase a.er Israeli attacks and anti-Islamic hate crimes increase a.er Palestinian attacks. There is little evidence that the ethno-religious group not associated with the attacker is subjected to hate crimes. Moreover, the lack of an effect of non-violent conflict reporting suggests that hate crimes are not triggered by the salience of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in itself. Our findings suggest that victimization transcends the locality of the conflict, implying that violent conflict may be more costly than existing research suggests.