By Gunnar Heinsohn and Daniel Pipes. Professor Heinsohn is director of the
Raphael-Lemkin-Institut fur Xenophobie- und Genozidforschung at the University
of Bremen. Mr. Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum.
October 8, 2007.
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:
1
40,000,000
Red China, 1949-76 (outright killing, manmade famine, Gulag)
2
10,000,000
Soviet Bloc: late Stalinism, 1950-53; post-Stalinism, to 1987 (mostly
Gulag)
3
4,000,000
Ethiopia, 1962-92: Communists, artificial hunger, genocides
4
3,800,000
Zaire (Congo-Kinshasa): 1967-68; 1977-78; 1992-95; 1998-present
5
2,800,000
Korean war, 1950-53
6
1,900,000
Sudan, 1955-72; 1983-2006 (civil wars, genocides)
7
1,870,000
Cambodia: Khmer Rouge 1975-79; civil war 1978-91
8
1,800,000
Vietnam War, 1954-75
9
1,800,000
Afghanistan: Soviet and internecine killings, Taliban 1980-2001
10
1,250,000
West Pakistan massacres in East Pakistan (Bangladesh 1971)
11
1,100,000
Nigeria, 1966-79 (Biafra); 1993-present
12
1,100,000
Mozambique, 1964-70 (30,000) + after retreat of Portugal 1976-92
13
1,000,000
Iran-Iraq-War, 1980-88
14
900,000
Rwanda genocide, 1994
15
875,000
Algeria: against France 1954-62 (675,000); between Islamists and the
government 1991-2006 (200,000)
16
850,000
Uganda, 1971-79; 1981-85; 1994-present
17
650,000
Indonesia: Marxists 1965-66 (450,000); East Timor, Papua, Aceh etc,
1969-present (200,000)
18
580,000
Angola: war against Portugal 1961-72 (80,000); after Portugal’s retreat
(1972-2002)
19
500,000
Brazil against its Indians, up to 1999
20
430,000
Vietnam, after the war ended in 1975 (own people; boat refugees)
21
400,000
Indochina: against France, 1945-54
22
400,000
Burundi, 1959-present (Tutsi/Hutu)
23
400,000
Somalia, 1991-present
24
400,000
North Korea up to 2006 (own people)
25
300,000
Kurds in Iraq, Iran, Turkey, 1980s-1990s
26
300,000
Iraq, 1970-2003 (Saddam against minorities)
27
240,000
Columbia, 1946-58; 1964-present
28
200,000
Yugoslavia, Tito regime, 1944-80
29
200,000
Guatemala, 1960-96
30
190,000
Laos, 1975-90
31
175,000
Serbia against Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, 1991-1999
32
150,000
Romania, 1949-99 (own people)
33
150,000
Liberia, 1989-97
34
140,000
Russia against Chechnya, 1994-present
35
150,000
Lebanon civil war, 1975-90
36
140,000
Kuwait War, 1990-91
37
130,000
Philippines: 1946-54 (10,000); 1972-present (120,000)
38
130,000
Burma/Myanmar, 1948-present
39
100,000
North Yemen, 1962-70
40
100,000
Sierra Leone, 1991-present
41
100,000
Albania, 1945-91 (own people)
42
80,000
Iran, 1978-79 (revolution)
43
75,000
Iraq, 2003-present (domestic)
44
75,000
El Salvador, 1975-92
45
70,000
Eritrea against Ethiopia, 1998-2000
46
68,000
Sri Lanka, 1997-present
47
60,000
Zimbabwe, 1966-79; 1980-present
48
60,000
Nicaragua, 1972-91 (Marxists/natives etc,)
49
51,000
Arab-Israeli conflict 1950-present
50
50,000
North Vietnam, 1954-75 (own people)
51
50,000
Tajikistan, 1992-96 (secularists against Islamists)
52
50,000
Equatorial Guinea, 1969-79
53
50,000
Peru, 1980-2000
54
50,000
Guinea, 1958-84
55
40,000
Chad, 1982-90
56
30,000
Bulgaria, 1948-89 (own people)
57
30,000
Rhodesia, 1972-79
58
30,000
Argentina, 1976-83 (own people)
59
27,000
Hungary, 1948-89 (own people)
60
26,000
Kashmir independence, 1989-present
61
25,000
Jordan government vs. Palestinians, 1970-71 (Black September)
62
22,000
Poland, 1948-89 (own people)
63
20,000
Syria, 1982 (against Islamists in Hama)
64
20,000
Chinese-Vietnamese war, 1979
65
19,000
Morocco: war against France, 1953-56 (3,000) and in Western Sahara,
1975-present (16,000)
66
18,000
Congo Republic, 1997-99
67
10,000
South 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 Volkermorde, 1999, 2nd ed.;
Heinsohn, G., Sohne 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.
