A post here today relayed a report of an Israeli attack on targets in Syrian territory. I normally stay away from this topic, but some of the comments in the pie fight that erupted in the comment thread for the post sent me out looking for some facts to lend some perspective to the argument I was observing about the justifications or lack thereof for such cross-border attacks by Israel.
Apparently, Israel launched missiles into Syria against shipments of weapons to prevent them from flowing to Hezbollah. This comment in particular, from a defender of Israel's right to make such attacks, set me off:
If you want to criticize Israel's actions I think you should go live in Northern Israel for year and live in fear that any night might be your last night alive due to random missile launches across the border. There is no argument that Hezbollah DOESN'T send rockets into Israel. This is the same as when the US does drone strikes into Pakistan to destroy munitions and material earmarked for use by the Taliban in Afghanistan.
I wondered whether residents of Northern Israel likewise live in fear that any day may be their last due to the risk of traffic fatality on their way back and forth to work. I didn't know the statistics on deaths from Hezbollah or terrorist attacks in Israel nor those from traffic accidents, but I thought, correctly it turns out, that the Google could help me find out.
According to official Israeli sources, during the Second Israel Hezbollah War, the deaths, both civilian and military, including four civilians dying from heart attacks during Hezbollah missile attacks, totaled 163. According to official Israeli sources, the deaths from Palestinian Violence and Terrorism totaled 13 in 2012, and all such deaths since 2001 add up to 1236, as of today, an average of about 120 per year.
In 2012, according to The Times of Israel Israel experienced 263 traffic fatalities, modern record low number.
According to figures for 2007, the most recent year on which I found a report, Israel spent 550 million shekels ($131 million) on the budget for the National Traffic Safety Authority. In 2011, the Knesset fought over whether to cut that budget. The 2014 Israeli budget for defense will exceed $14.5 billion.
Israel can spend as much as its people wish on defense, though I sometimes lament how much of that comes from U.S. taxpayers. They can spend as little as they like improving highway safety, the number one killer of Israelis. I don't expect any country to spend as much on highway safety as on defense or as little on defense as on highway safety. But the Israeli government seems to lack perspective on the nature of the threats to the lives of its citizens and appears willing to do almost anything to respond to historically smaller threats while doing so little to combat demonstrably greater threats.
Also, when otherwise sensible people defend the expenditure of some of Israel's gargantuan defense budget on cross-border raids against targets that, if left unmolested, might eventually lead to more weapons in the hands of the country's enemies, they sound to me much like Dick Cheney and his 1% Doctrine. That is not very good company to keep for right thinking people. The prospects for peace in the Middle East are going to go nowhere so long as Israel remains without a sense of perspective about the threats to its people and the extremism of how the country responds to such threats.
P.S. In further illustration of the art of overreaction:
"You know, I've always loved that word 'gargantuan' but you so rarely have the opportunity to use it in a sentence."
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