Striking Civilian Targets During the Lebanon War-A Social Psychological Analysis of Israeli Decision Makers

摘要

This article examines the socio-psychological mechanisms that guided decisions of the Israeli leadership to attack the civilian infrastructure during the Lebanon war in 2006. Based on reports by the Israeli governmental commission for the war, known as the Winograd Committee, a correlation between the de-legitimization of Hezbollah and the willingness to deploy military tactics and strategies that resulted in civilian devastation was found. Relying on a new model of the sources of protracted violent conflicts advanced by Rothbart and Korostelina (2006) and content analysis tools relating to ingroup-outgroup positioning theory, this article offers three distinct narrative patterns exhibited by Israeli decision makers. Such patterns reveal and solidify normative boundaries between Israel and Lebanese civilians in ways that justified in Israeli minds the attacks against the Lebanese infrastructure.