by Gunnar Heinsohn
“Terrorism will not be defeated without peace […] between Israel and Palestine. Here it is that the poison is incubated.” Tony Blair, 17 July 2003, to U.S. Congress.Tony Blair is no Mel Gibson or Osama Bin Laden. He is no mortal enemy of the Jews of Israel. Yet, since his assumption is so deeply ingrained in the mind of mankind one has to look for a method to test it. Is there a factor in our multicausal explanations of the conflict not yet appropriately tested? That appears to be highly improbable. Yet, what about the extremely old fashioned way of counting superfluous sons? Can a body count shed light on the validity of Tony Blair's view?
Conflicts 1949-2010 with at least 10,000 Fatalities.
Nations with Muslim majorities - all of them with youth bulges at the time of slaughter (in bold letters)
1 40,000,000 Red China, 1949-76 (outright killing, manmade famine, Gulag, Muslim Uighurs)
2 10,000,000 Late Stalinism, 1950-53; Post-Stalinism, to 1987 (mostly Gulag), more than 100.000 Muslims in Chechnya
3 5,800,000 Zaire (Congo-Kinshasa): 1967-68; 1977-78; 1992-95; 1998-today
4 4,000,000 Ethiopia, 1962-92: Communists, artificial hunger, genocides
5 2,800,000 Korean war, 1950-53
6 2,200,000 Sudan, 1955-72; 1983-2006 (civil wars, genocides); Dafur to today
7 1,870,000 Cambodia: Khmer Rouge 1975-79; civil war 1978-91
8 1,800,000 Vietnam War, 1954-75 (more than 90% Vietnamese, Allies)
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-today
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: war with France 1954-62 (675,000); Islamists/Government 1991-2006 (200,000)
16 850,000 Uganda, 1971-79; 1981-85; 1994-today
17 650,000 Indonesia: Marxists 1965-66 (450,000); East Timor, Papua, Aceh etc, 1969-today (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 France in Indochina, 1945-54
22 400,000 Burundi, 1959-today (Tutsi/Hutu)
23 400,000 Somalia, 1991-today
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-today
28 200,000 Yugoslavia, Tito regime, 1944-80
29 200,000 Guatemala, 1960-96
30 190,000 Laos, 1975-90
31 175,000 Serbia>Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, 1991-1999
32 150,000 Romania, 1949-99 (own people)
33 150,000 Liberia, 1989-97
34 140,000 Chechnya, 1994-today in independence war against Russia
35 150,000 Lebanon civil war, 1975-90
36 140,000 Kuwait War, 1990-91 (Arabs from Iraq and Kuwait, Allies)
37 130,000 Philippines: 1946-54 (10,000); 1972-today (Muslim Marxists, 120,000)
38 130,000 Burma/Myanmar, 1948-today
39 100,000 North Yemen, 1962-70
40 100,000 Sierra Leone, 1991-today
41 100,000 Albania, 1945-91 (own people)
42 80,000 Iran, 1978-79 (revolution)
43 75,000 Iraq, 2003-today (domestic)
44 75,000 El Salvador, 1975-92
45 70,000 Eritrea/Ethiopia, 1998-2000
46 68,000 Sri Lanka 1997-today
47 60,000 Zimbabwe, 1966-79; 1980-today
48 60,000 Nicaragua, 1972-91 (Marxists/natives etc,)
49 54,000 Arab wars against Israel, 1948-today (excluding the Israel-Palestine conflict; see 69) 44.000 Arabs; 10.000 Israelis
50 50,000 Communist 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-today
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 18,000 Congo Republic, 1997-99
66 19,000 Morocco: war against France, 1953-56 (3,000), Western Sahara, 1975-today (16,000)
67 15,000? "Tens of thousands of casualties and displaced" (Le Monde, 06-10-09). Yemen government against Huthi rebels.
68 14,000 Nigeria 2000 - 2010 (Muslims, Christians)
69 13,500 Israel-Palestinian conflict 1947-87 (5,000); 1987-91 (2,000); 2000-2010 (6,200: 80% Arabs, 20% Jews)
70 10,000 South Yemen, 1986 (civil war)
If conflict number 69 out of 70 conflicts with at least 10,000 casualties since 1950 is ranked as number 1 in need of an urgent solution to save the world, causes other than noble concerns for suffering may be at work. Since the Jews of Israel belong to the most persecuted ethnic and religious group in history, the mismatch between facts and their worldwide perception may force us to ask, again, if an anti-Jewish bias blurs the perception.
Around 11,000,000 Muslims suffered death by violence between 1948 and 2009. Of these, some 54,000, i.e., 0.5 percent or 1 out of 200 Muslims who were killed violently since 1948 died within the more than 60 years of fighting against Israel (1948-2010).
In other words, more than 90 percent of the 11 million Muslims perished in violence, since the creation of Israel, died in Muslim-on-Muslim violence.
A conflict would probably exist in Palestine as it does in territories with similar cases. Yet there are similar cases without bloodshed, e.g., Russian settlers in Latvia, as there are similar cases with bloodshed, e.g. Moroccan settlers in Western Sahara or Arab Iraqi settlers in Kurdish Iraq. There must be factor at work that can easily drive the Palestinian way of conflict resolution into a mortal mode.
The mortal mode can persist because well meant western aid – where nearly every newborn is provided for as a refugee – enabled Palestine to defeat Israel demographically. Gaza jumped from 200,000-240,000 inhabitants in 1950 to more than 1.6 million in 2010. In 2006, there were 640.000 Jewish boys under 15 against 1,120,000 Arab boys under 15 (West-Bank, Gaza Strip and Israeli Arabs combined). The last cohort with a Jewish majority – 30 to 44 years with 540,000 against 410,000 Arabs – has passed fighting age.
The death toll in the Israel-Palestine conflict remained low over six decades (1948-2009) because only one side tries to kill at random, whereas the Israeli side most of the time tries to defend itself with surgical strikes or targeted killing.
One could even say that the major factor for low Muslim casualties vis à vis Israel - as opposed to conflicts in which Muslims kill Muslims at random - is due to one side of the conflict not being Muslim.
Thus, it may be a good fortune for Palestinian Arabs that most of the time they must not turn against their own to consume their youth bulges but can turn the rage of their angry young men against Jews.
Yet, the battle of Lebanon against the Palestinian town of Nahr el Bared (May to September 2007) with a total of nearly 500 dead, or the internecine slaughter between Hamas and Fatah in Gaza since 2006 (more than 300 casualties) may give a hint of what may happen if hatred can no longer be executed against Jews. When Israel, in December 2008, tried to end the missile attacks from Gaza the strip suffered 1,385 casualties. Those are considerable losses. Yet, if Israel had pounded Gaza the way Lebanon has pounded Nahr el Bared killing 273 Islamists out of a population of 30,000, Gaza – with a population fifty times larger – would have lost 13,650. If Israel had smashed Gaza like Syria flattened the old city of Hama where, in February 1982, some 30.000 of its 300.000 inhabitants were killed to annihilate the Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood – “the single deadliest act by any Arab government against its own people” (Wright 2008, 243) – there would have been a loss of 150.000 in Gaza.
Yet, the battles of Nahr el Bared in Lebanon (May to September 2007) with more than 500 dead, or the intenecine slaughter between Hamas and Fatah in Gaza since 2006 (around 500 casualties) may give a hint of what may happen if hatred can no longer be executed against Jews.
Sources:
Brzezinski, Z., Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the Twenty-first Century, 1993.
Courtois, S., ed., Le Livre Noir du Communism, 1997.
Heinsohn, G., Lexikon der Völkermorde, 1999. Heinsohn, G., Söhne und Weltmacht, 2006, 8th ed.
Rummel. R., Death by Government, 1994.
Small, M., Singer, J.D., Resort to Arms: International and Civil Wars 1816-1980, 1982.
White, M. Please click here for Death Tolls for the Major Wars and Atrocities of the Twentieth Century (2003).
Wright, R., Dreams and Shadows : The Future of the Middle East, Penguin, 2008
*Gunnar Heinsohn (born 1943 in Gdynia/Poland; "summa cum laude" doctorates 1974 in sociology and 1982 in economics), serves, since 1993 as speaker of the Raphael-Lemkin-Institut at the University of Bremen, Europe's first institute devoted to comparative genocide research where he authored the first encyclopedia of genocide (Lexikon der Völkermorde; 1998; 1999, 2nd ed.), as well as an outline for an international body to monitor genocidal developments globally (Völkermordfrühwarnung / Genocide Watch, 2000 [1998]).
His study “Sons and World Power: Terror in the Rise and Fall of Nation (Söhne und Weltmacht; Zürich 2003; with 10th impression in 2008 a scholarly bestseller; Dutch, Japanese, and Polish editions in 2008) tries to illuminate the role of youth bulges in mega-killings of past, present, and future.
From 2005 to 2009, he gave lectures on the subject of youth bulges and violence to many German and international institutions He has published on the subject in the major newspapers and magazines of the German language area as well as in the Wall Street Journal, the International Herald Tribune, Le Monde, the Financial Times, the Weekly Standard, NRC-Handelsbald (Amsterdam), etc.
Together with Philippe Bourcier de Carbon (Paris), he was the only expert from continental Europe consulted for the study, The Graying of the Great Powers by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS; Washington DC 2008).
