Violent death---updating the U.S.-Israel comparison

People continue to ask if it's safe to visit Israel. Here is an update comparing deadly violence in Israel and the United States.

In 2006, Israel's ratio of death from all acts of violence---including murder, suicide bombings and the Second Lebanon War---was lower than the U.S. murder rate.

This is in line with earlier years. Despite being depicted in television shows and U.S. government travel warnings as a dangerous place, Israel customarily experiences a lower rate of deadly violence than the United States.

Here are the rates of violent death for both countries in 2006, the most recent year for which 12-month U.S. data are available:

Israel 2006:
5.4 deaths from crime, terror and war per 100,000 inhabitants

United States 2006:
5.7 deaths from murder and non-negligent manslaughter per 100,000 inhabitants

Various U.S. metropolitan areas report above-average deadly violence. Here are a few examples from among many. The numbers represent murders per 100,000 residents:

New York City, 7.3
Miami metro area, 7.6
Los Angeles metro area, 8.4
Houston metro area, 9.6
Atlantic City metro area, 11.1
Los Angeles, inside city limits, 12.4
Miami, inside city limits, 19.6
Atlanta, inside city limits, 22.6
Detroit-Dearborn metro area, 23.0
Philadelphia (AKA the City of Brotherly Love), 27.7
Washington, D.C., inside city limits, 29.1
Cincinnati, inside city limits, 29.9
New Orleans, inside city limits, 37.6
Baltimore, inside city limits, 43.3

The numbers come from data announced by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation in its Uniform Crime Reporting Program. This program compiles data from local law enforcement agencies throughout the United States.

The FBI reported that 17,034 acts of murder and non-negligent manslaughter took place in the United States in 2006. This was at a rate of 5.7 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants.

By contrast, Israel's 188 conventional homicide victims plus 30 people killed by suicide bombings and other acts classified as terrorism represented a rate below 3.1 violent deaths per 100,000 residents. The Second Lebanon War in the summer of 2006 took the lives of 119 Israeli soldiers and 44 civilians. This added 2.3 points to Israel's violent-death rate, raising it to about 5.4 per 100,000 inhabitants.

As a percentage of population, the deaths of 119 Israeli soldiers in a six-week war were more than six times as great as the entire U.S. military death toll in Iraq for all of 2006. Despite this, Israel's rate of deadly violence including the Lebanon war deaths was not only below the 2006 U.S. murder rate but was less than the lowest yearly homicide rate ever recorded in the United States (5.5 per 100,000 inhabitants).

Ami Isseroff has written about the phenomenon of U.S. residents saying it is dangerous to live in Israel yet telling their own stories of danger in the United States. I recall a briefing for editors arriving for a two-week seminar at Columbia University. The briefer told us to look out the windows at Morningside Park. We were pretty sure he was preparing to say that the place was unsafe at night. What he told us was that we should never enter the park during the day. That was quite a few years ago, and it's reported to be better now.

The FBI has taken to urging us not to rank or compare localities' crime rates without more information.

"Until data users examine all the variables that affect crime in a town, city, county, state, region, or college or university, they can make no meaningful comparisons," the FBI stated.

In this connection, it's worth repeating what I wrote in an earlier report on comparative homicide rates:

"[C]omparisons like this can be misleading. The numbers are general and cannot tell us important facts about the violence they reflect. They do not identify the neighborhoods where most violence takes place, nor do they show which elements of the population are most vulnerable. They do not show the relationship, if any, between the victim and killer. They do not show who is likely to commit violence. They do not tell us how many violent attacks the authorities succeeding in thwarting. They do not measure tension and fear among the living. Nor do they tell us what may happen tomorrow."

Even if comparisons are inexact, they can put some things in proportion. Take the accusations of the anti-Zionist teacher Ilan Pappe. He cites Palestinian deaths at the hands of the Israel army in 2006 in support of his claim that "Israel is employing genocidal policies in the Gaza Strip." Palestinian sources put the 2006 Gaza death toll at 588. The non-governmental groups Amnesty and Btselem announced lower figures. Whichever number is correct, it reflects a death toll no more genocidal than the murder rate in Baltimore, a city whose tourist promotion bureau assures us that it is "a fun and accessible destination for all to enjoy!"

--Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv

URLs in this article:
http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/tw/tw_922.html

http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2006/offenses/violent_crime/murder_homicide.html

http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2006/data/table_06.html

http://www.police.gov.il/pdf/douch/douch_2006/Annual_2006.pdf

http://tinyurl.com/22tgb6

http://icasualties.org/oif/DeathsByYear.aspx

http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2006/data/table_01.html

http://www.columbiaspectator.com/?q=node/20351

http://israel-like-this-as-if.blogspot.com/2007/01/nice-place-to-visit-but-we-wouldnt-want.html

http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2006/about/variables_affecting_crime.html

http://www.ilanpappe.org/Articles/Israeli%20Recipe%20for%202008.html

http://www.baltimore.org/

Continued (Permanent Link)

Send Flowers- From Israel

Israel is one of the leading exporters of flowers and related agricultural products - It is a fact: Israel is third in the world in exporting flowers to the EC countries. You can also order Israeli flowers in the USA. Israeli flower export is a $200 million annual business. It seems unlikely that our arid climate could be growing flowers to compete with Holland, but it is true. Hothouses, hi-tech innovation and ingenious irrigation schemes make up for lack of water and help take advantage of our long sunlit days to produce flowers in abundance in winter, in time for Valentine's day. Continued here

Pro-Palestinian groups are trying to boycott Israeli flower export, an evil Zionist plot, on the pretext that they are grown in "the territories." However, most Israeli produce, including flowers, is grown inside Israel proper. The Israeli flower export industry began in the late 1950s, when the West Bank was part of Jordan and Gaza was held by Egypt.

So if you support Israel but do not live here, make a point of asking for flowers imported from Israel. Check that the flowers have a bar code ending 7 290.

I confess to having played a tiny part in this Zionist conspiracy. My parents were anxious to make a special bar mitzvah celebration for me. Our family was not rich, but all the other kids at my Hebrew school had fancy bar mitzvot. Mine could not be quite as fancy, but it would be special. An uncle in Israel had a friend who wanted to see if it was possible to export flowers by air to the United States. My mother was a flower freak. With some difficulty, she arranged to have dozens of bouquets of gladiolii flown in from Israel.

The flowers were flown in by special air freight, and had to be picked up on the day of the event from a freight hangar at Idlewild airport, then undergoing extensive modifications to accomodate jet airliners. We set off for the airport in our little second hand green two tone Nash Rambler, a vehicle that had seen better days. On the way, my father had picked up a Yiddish comedian, who was also to appear at the Bar Mitzvah.

Searching for the obscure hangar, our route took us across several runways. Crossing one of them, an automatic gate went down ahead. My father tried to put the car in reverse and back out. The little Nash Rambler would not reverse. In fact, it would not move. A gate went down behind us. Presently, a DC-6 airliner came taxiing down the runway, headed for our car. This was a source of a certain amount of anxiety. The DC-6 was not large compared to today's jumbo jets, but it was more than a match for a little green Nash Rambler. The plane stopped, and just stood there impatiently, its propellors whirring about expectantly. Eventually, the rear gate was opened, the car was pushed off the runway and coaxed back to functionality. Naturally, the comedian had to repeat and embellish this story at the bar mitzvah banquet.

Happy Valentine's day. Don't forget to send flowers - From Israel.
Ami Isseroff

Continued (Permanent Link)

Hershl - A Jewish success story

(How Jews who are vociferously against Israel appear from an Israeli perspective)

Harry Schweig, known in the Jewish faith as Tzvi or Hershl, was a failure at 33. He lived at home with his mother. He lectured in Political Science and Cultural Globalization at the University of Podunk on the Styx. He could talk for hours about Jungian themes in the post-structural analysis of the depletion of the ozone layer, and discourse at length about the metanarrative, without ever being able to define it. In brief, he was the modern day incarnation of the nerd, first immortalized perhaps by P.G. Wodehouse over 80 years ago in the timid person of Mr. Fink-Nottle. Instead of newts, Hershl had political science and cultural globalization.

Hershl's was a dull existence indeed. He was not the life of the party. He wasn't even the death of the party. When he entered or left a roomful of partygoers, it made no difference. He was transparent, invisible. Long haired coeds wearing tight jeans did not hang on his every word or stare admiringly at him with their large blue eyes. In fact, they shunned his company. He drifted from university to university, publishing desultory papers in obscure journals. Hershl longed for success, recognition, tenure, women, lecture invitations, but all these accolades went to other laborers in the vineyards of academia.

P.G. Wodehouse was the creator the memorable Bertram Wooster and his estimable valet, Jeeves. That pair were forever engaged in advancing the amatory and other careers of various people like Fink-Nottle and our unfortunate Mr. Schweig. For Schweig, there was no to be no Jeeves who would find a magic solution to his predicament. But Schweig rescued himself.

The Lord often helps those who are bereft of other hope, and sometimes inspiration comes from other quarters. Whatever the source, one day Hershl had an epiphany. Hershl's Jewishness was nominal. He knew less about Judaism than he did about Shintoism. Being Jewish was another bad card dealt him by the deck of fortune, like his thinning hair and his expanding waistline and receding chin. It was irksome. That Israel place kept coming up in the news and reminding him -- and others -- of his Jewishness. He became convinced that his Jewishness was a bothersome appendage that prevented his advancement. He toyed with the idea of changing his name to Harold Stanley, but decided on a better plan instead.

While reading the ancient book, "The Art of War," by the venerable Sun Tzu, it occurred to Hershl that a liability can be turned into an asset, a weakness into a strongpoint. He scrapped the fourth revision of "The politics of meaninglessness according to Lyotard and the post-structuralist metanarrative" and began writing:

"Israel is an apartheid state. As a Jew I must disociate myself from the evil policies of the well-poisoning and blood drinking Zionists. Israel is a historical mistake. Zionism is racism. Plan Daled was a Zionist plot for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine..."

And so on, in that vein. Hershl was not overburdened with any knowledge of the Middle East or Israel, but he had an abundant supply of periodicals containing politically correct articles that summarized the work of authors who had summarized the work of other authors, who sumarized the work of others who had invented history. These served as a never-failing source of inspiration.

When the work was done, Hershl spiced it up with references to globalization, metanarrative, colonialism and neo-conservatives, added a few war criminals here and there, and sent it off to a prominent journal. Hershl's article was published with the following lede:

A prominent Jewish intellectual, a grandson of Holocaust survivors, speaks out against Israeli policies and the oppressive colonialist warmonger Zionist occupation...

Hershl's article became a classic, reprinted in anthologies entitled "Jews speak out against Israel" and "Jews for Justice in the Middle East," posted on the Web and linked from Web sites such as Radioislam, Stormfront and other bastions of liberal thought.

By reading reams of fashionable review articles, Hershl became a "Middle East Expert." He could explain to you why, if Hamas kill Fatah, that is the fault of Israel, and why, if Fatah steal from Palestinians, that is likewise Israel's fault. He could expound on colonialist themes in the Talmud, and he was a past-master at inventing quotes of David Ben-Gurion and Ariel Sharon. "David Ben-Gurion wrote in his diary, 'We will grind the bones of the Arabs of Palestine to make our bread.' Ariel Sharon said 'We will drink the blood of the Palestinian Arabs.'" Hershl could explain that suicide bombings were due to Israeli policy and the 9-11 attacks were a plot by the Mossad. Hershl could explain that the Duvdevani unit of the IDF was worse than the Tottenkopf SS. He had read it in a Counterpunch article, so it must be true. "Not in my name!" exclaimed Hershl.

Hershl expanded his article into a book, "How the Zionist conspiracy accomplished the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine," and then another book, "Son of How the Zionist conspiracy accomplished the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" and "How the Zionist conspiracy accomplished the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine Returns." Zionist organizations branded him a traitor and an apostate, increasing his cachet among the connoisseurs of anti-Zionism. The Guardian and the New York Times defended him as a "Liberal."

Hershl visited Beirut and was photographed shaking hands with Hassan Nasrallah. He travelled to Iran and kissed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on both cheeks, declaring that the Holocaust never happened, and was all an invention of the Zionist conspiracy.

Success was his at last. The telephone did not stop ringing. Hershl's lecture calendar was full. Everywhere he went, Hershl told about the difficulties experienced by a Jew who speaks out against Israel. He explained that the Zionist establishment would not let him speak. He explained it in the Guardian, the Independent, the New York Times, and the New York Review of Books. He appeared on television and expatiated on the attempts of the Israel Lobby to ban him to oblivion. He was featured on the BBC, on 60 minutes and PBS. Thanks to Hershl, everyone, everywhere in the English speaking world, got to know that the Zionist lobby quashed dissent.

Lissome females in jeans willingly removed those garments and others in the service of intellectual inspiration for the courageous anti-Zionist don of Podunk on the Styx. He was offered tenure, but turned it down for a post at a more prestigious university.

You are looking for a moral? Comeuppance? Forget it. Look in the book of Job. Hershl the anti-Israel Jew lived happily ever after, enjoying the accolades of the wise and the fruits of his endeavors.

Ami Isseroff

Continued (Permanent Link)