This study advances a comprehensive analysis of the antecedents of ethnic
exclusionism towards Palestinian citizens of Israel among Israeli immigrants from the
former Soviet Union in comparison to veteran Israelis. We conducted a large-scale
study of ethnic exclusionism in the face of terrorism in Israel by means of telephone
surveys in September 2003 and analyzed a sample of 641 veteran Jews and 131
immigrants. Findings obtained via interactions analyses and structural equation
modeling show that a) immigrants are more exclusionists than Israeli veterans, b)
authoritarianism predicts ethnic exclusionism both among immigrants and non-
immigrants, c) support for extreme right-wing political tendencies, as well as
perceived psychosocial loss in response to terror, account for a significant portion of
the variance in ethnic exclusionism, but only among Israeli veterans. Finally, d)
failure to undergo posttraumatic growth in response to terrorism (e.g., finding
meaning in life, becoming closer to others) is a significant predictor of ethnic
exclusionism only among immigrants. Results suggest that immigrants' ethnic
exclusionism is more a product of their experience of “being immigrants,” whereas
veteran Israelis are more impacted by personal and social characteristics and their
experiences when facing terrorism.
Key words: ethnic exclusionism, authoritarianism, COR (conservation of
resources) theory, terrorism.
1. Introduction
Negative attitudes towards foreigners and minorities have been one of the
main challenges facing democratic societies (Sullivan and Transue 1999). This
phenomenon has become even more critical due to massive waves of immigration into
2
Convention