I don't believe that number is credible at all, 15,000 people easily died in the 1948 war alone.DarkArk wrote: Only about 15,000 people have died in the entire conflict going back to 1948, and most of those were before 1980 when actual wars were being fought. It's rather odd when you compare it to conflicts like Sri Lanka, Sudan, or the Congo, all of which have had much higher death rates and more intense conflict in the same period.
In any event, even if one took an unreasonable view that only Israeli and Palestininan deaths directly fighting each other 'count', of course then the total would be low. One side has been near totally disarmed for most of the entire conflict, of course the death toll will be low, only in 1948, and in the post Oslo accords period have the Palestinians had any even remotely significant weaponry. Even when the west bank was in Jordanian hands, the locals were not armed. Egypt did form a formal division of Palestinian troops, but they were fairly few in number. But in reality a great many people have died in all the Arab Israeli wars. Maybe not an overwhelming number no, but that's also heavily linked into the fact that both sides were heavily armed by the superpowers, and Israel still is heavily armed, meaning that the fighting didn't turn into small bands of armed men burning down villages twenty times in a row. That's also why it got and gets so much attention.
I don't know about per capita, but as a percentage of the GDP the US sure isn't second. On the other hand, Israel would be in deep trouble if the US didn't provide so much foreign aid, without even considering what would happen to them without US cover at the UN. So no, not really impressed by the idea that Israel is an irreplaceable source of high tech products, few things exist that only Israel makes and fewer still that could not be replaced were US money redirected.
Israel has the third largest number of companies listed on NASDAQ, behind only China and the United States itself. Dollar amount might be betrayed by the value of it, which is mostly in the realm of high-tech industry that is not easily replaced by any other country. Israel invests more per capita into science research than any other country on the planet (nearly an order of magnitude more than the US which is number two), and Israelis hold a large number of US patents. Keeping this technology trade going is of vital interest to the US.
So, you kind of forgot about the 1973 oil embargo? I'd wonder if all the trade the US has ever had with Israel equal the amount of economic damage that did, a 6% drop in the US GDP as I recall.Also, I would say Turkey and Saudi Arabia are only peripherally related to the conflict. Except for the Saudis sending volunteers (in 1967?), neither has fought on either side or been heavily involved.
