Threatened, hence justified: Jewish Israelis’ use of competitive victimhood to justify violence against Palestinians

Abstract

We theorised that competitive victimhood—the tendency to see one’s ingroup as having suffered more than the outgroup as a result of a prolonged conflict—may function strategically as a psychological mechanism to justify violent actions against the outgroup under high (vs. low) realistic threat. Focusing on the Jewish Israeli perspective in the Israeli‒Palestinian conflict, the present study supports this argument by demonstrating the positive relationship between competitive victimhood and justifying both direct and structural violence against Palestinians following high (vs. low) realistic threat. Theoretical and applied implications for conflict resolution are discussed.