"Casualties"

You know what's interesting? Looking at the numbers of people who were killed and trying to make sense of it. Ok actually I'm here to argue that it's not that interesting. I see foreigners claim that Israel is horrible because of the number of people who were killed in Lebanon or Iran or Gaza, which is much much higher than the number of people killed in Israel. I see Israelis tie themselves up in knots trying to explain the difference.

And yeah, it's crazy that so few Israelis have been killed, but that's the wrong number to look at. At this point in the current war with Iran I think seventeen Israelis have died and about 3500 have been injured. Now that's a wild statistic to look at. The question that needs to be asked is, what factors determine the number of casualties?

Let's talk about car accidents for a minute. I have a friend who used to work for the national authority for road safety here in Israel and she told me a little about how they do statistics there. Her point was that when you're looking at severity of car accidents you have to look at injuries the same way you look at death, because some horrible accidents leave people severely injured for the rest of their lives, but they could have died. Sometimes the difference between life and death has nothing to do with the severity of the accident - maybe it's the medical care, speed of ambulance arrival, or just the exact angle that the passenger hit the windshield. It could be the make of the car or the age of the victim. And of course the same accident would have more casualties if there were more people in the car besides the driver.

Back to war, I think the point is clear. I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions.