You are using an outdated browser.
Please upgrade your browser
and improve your visit to our site.
Skip Navigation

Terror Risk Index: Surprise! Surprise!

Maplecroft is an intellectually astute and politically unbiased global risk evaluator. Its business is to rank (with analysis) some of the world's major (and troublesome) realities from carbon accounting to human rights.

Its roster includes assessing the dangers of terrorism in different countries on a monthly basis. Predictably, the list is pretty stable...with occasional surprises. Like Greece moving this month from 57 to 24 on the scale, largely because violent left-wing groups have lapsed into their post-war habits among which terror is the road to liberation.

In any case, you won't be surprised to learn Somalia, Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan are the first four of the countries denoted as centers of terror, and in that order. I hesitate to point out that al these countries are in the grip of intra-Muslim conflict. Numbers six, seven, eight, nine and ten are sequentially Colombia, Thailand, Philippines, Yemen and Russia of which only Colombia is not afflicted by variations on the jihad theme.

So which country is # five? Well, it's not exactly a state. But it wants to be a state. And Maplecroft has put them in the category of states. So, lo and behold, the "Palestinian Territories" are counted as in the fifth rank.

Before you leap to conclusions: No, this is not at all attributable to the nasty Jewish terrorists (and, yes, they are nasty and, if not actually terrorists, prone to terrorist acts.) The stunning placement right behind Afghanistan, mind you, belongs to the native stock of the Arabs of Palestine. Enrolled or mobilized into Hamas, Fatah, Islamic Jihad and various other groups and grouplets of the Palestinian revolt. It is astounding that the territories are so inflamed against their own populations.

Can you imagine, moreover, that what everybody is ready to call Palestine is in front of Yemen in which the U.S. is risking so much?

So where does Israel stand in this index? It is #14 on this listing. But, unlike other countries beset by inside, its perils do not come from within its frontiers. Still, 14th is not at all a safety zone? Maplecroft labels Israel at "extreme risk." And that is with the "wall," which is actually much more a "fence," (but who's watching what the news media say?), that has allowed Israelis to get on a bus or go into a cafe with little fear.

Herzl said that Zionism means that, all things considered, a Jew will be able to anticipate dying in his own bed.

This is my prayer for Muslims, too.