"Terrorism is nearly alone in its power to amplify the actions of an individual to influence the behavior of millions. By creating a fear of future attacks, terrorism affects even those who do not experience the violence firsthand. That fear leads people to give security a higher priority, to seek authority figures who will impose order and to re-evaluate who in society might pose a threat. Researchers who seek to understand this effect have long looked to Israel. With its history of terrorism and its complex multiparty political system, the country is something of a laboratory for understanding the interplay of attacks and elections. Claude Berrebi of the RAND Corporation and Esteban F. Klor of Hebrew University found, in a 2008 study, that when an area suffered a terrorist attack in the three months before an election, voters in that area shifted toward right-wing parties by an average of 1.35 percentage points. The effect was messier in parts of the country that did not experience the attack. Areas where voters already leaned right tended to increase support for right-wing parties. But left-leaning areas reduced their support for right-wing parties. Even if those effects cancel out in the short term, in the long term they can deepen political polarization, making politics more extreme."