Study: Children and Middle East Violence

A new study out of the University of Michigan measures the psychological toll the Israeli occupation and Palestinian resistance take on the region's children.

The three-year study looked at 1,500 Arab and Israeli youth.

Rowell Huesmann, the study's lead researcher, found that nearly 50% of Palestinian kids aged 11 to 14 have seen other Palestinians crying over the war-related death of a loved one, and another 50% had seen an injured or dead Palestinian directly.

Among Israeli children in the same age group, around 25% reported seeing people grieving. Ten percent had seen casualties.

Given the fact that Palestinians live under Israeli military occupation and are for more likely to be attacked militarily than are Israelis, this is not surprising.

The sight of violence and people grieving can have a grave impact on child development and behavior. "The results show that Palestinian children in particular are seeing extraordinary amounts of very disturbing violence in their daily lives, and the more they are exposed to violence, the more anxiety they experience and the more aggressively they behave," said psychologist Eric Dubow, who along with Paul Boxer of Rutgers University is a co-principal investigator of the project.

"Violence is a contagious disease just like smallpox or typhoid," said Huesmann.

While seeming to fuel the potential for inter-group violence in the future, the study also suggests that intra-group violence increases with exposure to war-related violence. Huesmann pointed out that it is "not well known that exposure to war violence committed against your own group by another group increases your aggressive behavior toward members of your own group."

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