Kill Thy Neighbor

When do people to commit mass violence against an ethnic, religious or racial group in their midst? Does the demand for minority rights inevitably spark existential fears and violent reactions from the majority group? In his book Intimate Violence, co-author Jeffrey Kopstein of University of California, Irvine looks at pogroms against the Jews of Poland to explain when and why ethnic violence occurs. This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.