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Gunnar Heinsohn and Daniel Pipes: The Arab-Israeli conflict in the global imagination ... Arab-Israeli Fatalities Rank 49th

[Professor Heinsohn is director of the Raphael-Lemkin-Institut für Xenophobie- und Genozidforschung at the University of Bremen. Mr. Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum.]

The Arab-Israeli conflict is often said, not just by extremists, to be the world's most dangerous conflict – and, accordingly, Israel is judged the world's most belligerent country.

For example, British prime minister Tony Blair told the U.S. Congress in July 2003 that"Terrorism will not be defeated without peace in the Middle East between Israel and Palestine. Here it is that the poison is incubated. Here it is that the extremist is able to confuse in the mind of a frighteningly large number of people the case for a Palestinian state and the destruction of Israel." This viewpoint leads many Europeans, among others, to see Israel as the most menacing country on earth.

But is this true? It flies in the face of the well-known pattern that liberal democracies do not aggress; plus, it assumes, wrongly, that the Arab-Israeli conflict is among the most costly in terms of lives lost.

To place the Arab-Israeli fatalities in their proper context, one of the two co-authors, Gunnar Heinsohn, has compiled statistics to rank conflicts since 1950 by the number of human deaths incurred. Note how far down the list is the entry in bold type.

Conflicts since 1950 with over 10,000 Fatalities*

140,000,000Red China, 1949-76 (outright killing, manmade famine, Gulag)
210,000,000Soviet Bloc: late Stalinism, 1950-53; post-Stalinism, to 1987 (mostly Gulag)
34,000,000Ethiopia, 1962-92: Communists, artificial hunger, genocides
43,800,000Zaire (Congo-Kinshasa): 1967-68; 1977-78; 1992-95; 1998-present
52,800,000Korean war, 1950-53
61,900,000Sudan, 1955-72; 1983-2006 (civil wars, genocides)
71,870,000Cambodia: Khmer Rouge 1975-79; civil war 1978-91
81,800,000Vietnam War, 1954-75
91,800,000Afghanistan: Soviet and internecine killings, Taliban 1980-2001
101,250,000West Pakistan massacres in East Pakistan (Bangladesh 1971)
111,100,000Nigeria, 1966-79 (Biafra); 1993-present
121,100,000Mozambique, 1964-70 (30,000) + after retreat of Portugal 1976-92
131,000,000Iran-Iraq-War, 1980-88
14900,000Rwanda genocide, 1994
15875,000Algeria: against France 1954-62 (675,000); between Islamists and the government 1991-2006 (200,000)
16850,000Uganda, 1971-79; 1981-85; 1994-present
17650,000Indonesia: Marxists 1965-66 (450,000); East Timor, Papua, Aceh etc, 1969-present (200,000)
18580,000Angola: war against Portugal 1961-72 (80,000); after Portugal's retreat (1972-2002)
19500,000Brazil against its Indians, up to 1999
20430,000Vietnam, after the war ended in 1975 (own people; boat refugees)
21400,000Indochina: against France, 1945-54
22400,000Burundi, 1959-present (Tutsi/Hutu)
23400,000Somalia, 1991-present
24400,000North Korea up to 2006 (own people)
25300,000Kurds in Iraq, Iran, Turkey, 1980s-1990s
26300,000Iraq, 1970-2003 (Saddam against minorities)
27240,000Columbia, 1946-58; 1964-present
28200,000Yugoslavia, Tito regime, 1944-80
29200,000Guatemala, 1960-96
30190,000Laos, 1975-90
31175,000Serbia against Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, 1991-1999
32150,000Romania, 1949-99 (own people)
33150,000Liberia, 1989-97
34140,000Russia against Chechnya, 1994-present
35150,000Lebanon civil war, 1975-90
36140,000Kuwait War, 1990-91
37130,000Philippines: 1946-54 (10,000); 1972-present (120,000)
38130,000Burma/Myanmar, 1948-present
39100,000North Yemen, 1962-70
40100,000Sierra Leone, 1991-present
41100,000Albania, 1945-91 (own people)
4280,000Iran, 1978-79 (revolution)
4375,000Iraq, 2003-present (domestic)
4475,000El Salvador, 1975-92
4570,000Eritrea against Ethiopia, 1998-2000
4668,000Sri Lanka, 1997-present
4760,000Zimbabwe, 1966-79; 1980-present
4860,000Nicaragua, 1972-91 (Marxists/natives etc,)
4951,000Arab-Israeli conflict 1950-present
5050,000North Vietnam, 1954-75 (own people)
5150,000Tajikistan, 1992-96 (secularists against Islamists)
5250,000Equatorial Guinea, 1969-79
5350,000Peru, 1980-2000
5450,000Guinea, 1958-84
5540,000Chad, 1982-90
5630,000Bulgaria, 1948-89 (own people)
5730,000Rhodesia, 1972-79
5830,000Argentina, 1976-83 (own people)
5927,000Hungary, 1948-89 (own people)
6026,000Kashmir independence, 1989-present
6125,000Jordan government vs. Palestinians, 1970-71 (Black September)
6222,000Poland, 1948-89 (own people)
6320,000Syria, 1982 (against Islamists in Hama)
6420,000Chinese-Vietnamese war, 1979
6519,000Morocco: war against France, 1953-56 (3,000) and in Western Sahara, 1975-present (16,000)
6618,000Congo Republic, 1997-99
6710,000South Yemen, 1986 (civil war)

*All figures rounded. Sources: Brzezinski, Z., Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the Twenty-first Century, 1993; Courtois, S., Le Livre Noir du Communism, 1997; Heinsohn, G., Lexikon der Völkermorde, 1999,2nd ed.; Heinsohn, G., Söhne und Weltmacht, 2006, 8th ed.; Rummel. R., Death by Government, 1994; Small, M. and Singer, J.D., Resort to Arms: International and Civil Wars 1816-1980, 1982; White, M.,"Death Tolls for the Major Wars and Atrocities of the Twentieth Century," 2003.

Mao Tse-Tung, by far the greatest post-1950 murderer.

This grisly inventory finds the total number of deaths in conflicts since 1950 numbering about 85,000,000. Of that sum, the deaths in the Arab-Israeli conflict since 1950 include 32,000 deaths due to Arab state attacks and 19,000 due to Palestinian attacks, or 51,000 in all. Arabs make up roughly 35,000 of these dead and Jewish Israelis make up 16,000.

These figures mean that deaths Arab-Israeli fighting since 1950 amount to just 0.06 percent of the total number of deaths in all conflicts in that period. More graphically, only 1 out of about 1,700 persons killed in conflicts since 1950 has died due to Arab-Israeli fighting.

(Adding the 11,000 killed in the Israeli war of independence, 1947-49, made up of 5,000 Arabs and 6,000 Israeli Jews, does not significantly alter these figures.)

In a different perspective, some 11,000,000 Muslims have been violently killed since 1948, of which 35,000, or 0.3 percent, died during the sixty years of fighting Israel, or just 1 out of every 315 Muslim fatalities. In contrast, over 90 percent of the 11 million who perished were killed by fellow Muslims.

Comments: (1) Despite the relative non-lethality of the Arab-Israeli conflict, its renown, notoriety, complexity, and diplomatic centrality will probably give it continued out-sized importance in the global imagination. And Israel's reputation will continue to pay the price. (2) Still, it helps to point out the 1-in-1,700 statistic as a corrective, in the hope that one day, this reality will register, permitting the Arab-Israeli conflict to subside to its rightful, lesser place in world politics.

Read entire article at FrontpageMag.com