“Do you know why Israelis are so calm? We have brutal terror attacks on our civilians and still, life in Israel is pretty good. The reason is that people trust their defence forces, their police, their response teams and the security agencies. They know they’re doing a good job. You can’t say the same thing about Americans and Canadians. They don’t trust anybody,” Sela said. “But they say, ‘So far, so good’. Then if something happens, all hell breaks loose and you’ve spent eight hours in an airport. Which is ridiculous. Not justifiable.
“But, what can you do? Americans and Canadians are nice people and they will do anything because they were told to do so and because they don’t know any different.”
Efraim Benmelech (Harvard University), Claude Berrebi (Rand Corporation) and Esteban F. Klor (Hebrew University) have a new working paper on the economic cost of harboring terrorism.
The literature on conflict and terrorism has paid little attention to the economic costs of terrorism for the perpetrators. This paper aims to fill that gap by examining the economic costs of committing suicide terror attacks. Using data covering the universe of Palestinian suicide terrorists during the second Palestinian uprising, combined with data from the Palestinian Labor Force Survey, we identify and quantify the impact of a successful attack on unemployment and wages. We find robust evidence that terror attacks have important economic costs. The results suggest that a successful attack causes an increase of 5.3 percent in unemployment, increases the likelihood that the district’s average wages fall in the quarter following an attack by more than 20 percent, and reduces the number of Palestinians working in Israel by 6.7 percent relative to its mean. Importantly, these effects are persistent and last for at least six months after the attack.
Mayssun El-Attar (Institute for Fiscal Studies, London) has a new paper on the role of education in promoting the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Below is the abstract:
This paper explores Palestinians’ attitudes towards a peace process and their determinants, with a particular focus on the role of education. Understanding the factors that shape attitudes towards peace is important in order to be successful in negotiations or in implementing a peace agreement. In the literature, there is particular disagreement about the role of education. While some authors have linked violent and extreme positions to ignorance and to low market opportunities, others have found that education is positively correlated with being a member of a terrorist group. To better understand the role of education I decompose the attitudes towards peace into two dimensions; attitudes towards reconciliation and attitudes towards concessions. To measure these attitudes, I use a flexible item response model proposed by Spady (2007), which allows to take into account the multidimensionality of the concepts. The results show that education has a positive effect on attitudes towards concessions but a negative effect on attitudes towards reconciliation. This may occur because relative to a situation of peace, highly educated individuals are more strongly affected by current depressed economic conditions in Palestine. They therefore have more to gain from a peace agreement and may thus be more willing to make concessions. At the same time, they may be more frustrated and therefore less willing to reconcile. I also find that their attitudes to reconciliation move closely with aggregate economic conditions, while those of less educated individual are also influenced by local factors such as the construction of the separation barrier in their region of residence.
Garrick Blalock, Vrinda Kadiyali and Daniel H. Simon of Cornell University found that in the first 12 months after 9/11, highway travel increased and an estimated 1,250 adults died in traffic fatalities who otherwise wouldn’t have:
We find that driving fatalities increased significantly following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, an event which prompted many travelers to substitute less-safe surface transportation for safer air transportation. After controlling for time trends, weather, road conditions, and other factors, we attribute an increase of 242 driving fatalities per month to additional road travel undertaken in response to 9/11. In total, our results suggest that at least 1,200 additional driving deaths are attributable to the effect of 9/11. We also provide evidence that is consistent with the 9/11 effect on road fatalities weakening over time as drivers return to flying. Our results show that the public response to terrorist threats can create unintended consequences that rival the attacks themselves in severity.
According to a new paper by Eric D. Gould and Guy Stecklov of the Hebrew University in Israel, since terrorism increases police presence and keeps people at home, it unintentionally reduces crime:
This paper argues that terrorism, beyond its immediate impact on innocent victims, also raises the costs of crime, and therefore, imposes a negative externality on potential criminals. Terrorism raises the costs of crime through two channels: (i) by increasing the presence and activity of the police force, and (ii) causing more people to stay at home rather than going out for leisure activities. Our analysis exploits a panel of 120 fatal terror attacks and all reported crimes for 17 districts throughout Israel between 2000 and 2005. After controlling for the fixed-effect of each district and for district-specific time trends, we show that terror attacks reduce property crimes such as burglary, auto-theft, and thefts-from-cars. Terror also reduces assaults and aggravated assaults which occur in private homes, but increases incidents of trespassing and “disrupting the police.” Taken as a whole, the results are consistent with a stronger deterrence effect produced by an increased police presence after a terror attack. A higher level of policing is likely to catch more people trespassing, and at the same time, reduce the number of property crimes. The decline in crimes committed in private houses is likely an indication that the tendency for individuals to stay home after a terror attack further increases the costs of crime.
Eight years ago, nearly 3,000 American individuals were murdered. A massive retaliatory use of force became an immediate moral imperative for the United States Government.
I will leave it to more poetic voices to describe the tragedy that occurred on September 11th, 2001. But I will attempt to put those events into a context that I do not believe is used enough in discussions of foreign policy. The context is the only context that any government should operate within: self-interest. The “self” being each individual comprising a government’s constituency. This modus operandi for government, naturally, extends into the realm of foreign policy. In every interaction with the outside world, our government should act in our interests. This means that no war is ever fought for the sake of the people of another nation (i.e. our government has no right to sacrifice the lives of American soldiers for any purpose other than preserving the individual rights of American citizens). This is not to say that an American life is, intrinsically, worth any more than the life of a foreigner. However, a foreigner’s life should only be a secondary consideration for our government.
This philosophy comes with a plethora of ramifications that affect a wide array of government programs and actions. However, for the sake of this day and post, I will focus on self-defense. The attack of 9/11/01 was an attack on America as a nation, American ideals, American lives. But most importantly, it was an attack on individuals – American individuals, to be precise. As such, a massive retaliation on anyone and everyone responsible was a moral imperative for the U.S. Government. No quarter was given to us by our enemies, and none should have been given in return. I believe Dr. Yaron Brook said it most succinctly:
Eschewing self-interest in the name of compassion is immoral. The result is self-destruction.
Our response to radical Islamic terrorism has clearly lacked any sense of self-esteem or a proper understanding of the role of government. Americans – because they are human beings – have an inalienable right to their lives. 9/11/01 was more than an attack on a nation’s pride, it was an attack on human pride, an attack on human dignity. Those who do not respect life do not deserve it. If you look back on 9/11/01 and feel anger or rage, do not be ashamed. The root of that righteous indignation is pride – specifically, pride in the fact of your existence as a human being.
America was built upon the idea that men should deal with one another by reason, and by mutual consent and to mutual advantage. Sadly, there are those in this world that choose to deal with their fellow men by force – let them be dealt with appropriately. To the extent that inaction by our government results in the loss of American lives, our government can be held morally responsible.
A very interesting article in Time magazine on the Taliban’s funding explains,
Up to now, most explanations of the Taliban’s funding have focused on its control of Afghanistan’s poppy fields, which provide the raw material for heroin. Last month the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency released a report estimating that the Taliban receives about $70 million a year from the drug trade. But drugs aren’t the whole story. “The Taliban obtains revenue from a variety of sources, including extortion of funds from both legitimate and unlawful activity,” says David Cohen, the Treasury’s assistant secretary for terrorist financing. Major General Michael Flynn, senior military intelligence official at NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan stresses Mafia-like activities such as extortion and kidnapping for ransom. “I would say that there is more money going into the pockets of local leaders [of the insurgency] from criminal activities than there is from narcotics money,“ he says.
In 2008 I wrote a report on al Qaeda’s interest in the Palestinian territories. In the paper, I explored Israel’s place in al Qaeda’s narrative and its shift to the center of al Qaeda’s strategy. I did this through tracing the history of al Qaeda in the Palestinian territories and its relations with Hamas, which currently rules over the Gaza Strip. Ultimately, I concluded that while Hamas and al Qaeda share certain ideologies, their ultimate objectives make their union unfeasible. The result, I wrote, would make the competition over power inevitable.
Earlier this week, Hamas killed 16 people in the Gaza Strip allegedly affiliated with al Qaeda. This development confirms my hypothesis.
A Palestinian militant organisation that was ridiculed in the new Sacha Baron Cohen film has threatened to “respond in the way we find suitable” against the London-born satirist.
The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the armed wing of the Fatah movement, has condemned the film, Bruno, in which Cohen plays a gay Austrian fashionista, as “part of a conspiracy” against them. There was no comment from Cohen.
In the film, Cohen attempts to get himself kidnapped and arranges a meeting with Ayman Abu Aita, who, it is claimed, is a leader in the Martyrs Brigade, which is designated as a terrorist group in the US and European Union. While promoting the film, Cohen spoke of the clandestine meetings at shadowy locations and bodyguards required to set up the scene.
RT @ArielGoldring: The left wants the economy to grow yet is infuriates when businesses earn profits. What the hell. 2 years ago
RT @ArielGoldring: Wisdom from an economic maven. @Reuters: FLASH: Obama says will take "several years" for U.S. economy to get back whe ... 2 years ago
RT @ArielGoldring: "Only 45.4% of Americans had jobs in 2010, the lowest rate since 1983 and down from a peak of 49.3% in 2000." http:// ... 2 years ago
Posted by Ariel Goldring 
