Statistical analysis of terrorism in the Netanyahu years

The Numbers Don’t Lie: Where Netanyahu’s rule has coincided with an improvement in the statistics, is a reduction in the number of rockets fired.

By DAVID BRUMMER
Avner Hadad at the Maariv National Security Conferenc in Tel Aviv on March 27, 2019 (photo credit: MOR ALONI/MAARIV)
Avner Hadad at the Maariv National Security Conferenc in Tel Aviv on March 27, 2019
(photo credit: MOR ALONI/MAARIV)
Election season is in full swing, with less than two weeks to go before what could potentially be the most far-reaching and revolutionary decision since Menachem Begin’s Likud swept to power in 1977. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has maintained his lengthy tenure partly as a result of the perception that he is the most effective operative when it comes to all things security. But, do the statistics bear out this assertion?
“We are on the cusp of the elections,” said Avner Hadad, KSM Indices CEO, “and although I come from the world of finance and math, maybe I get to see things more clearly.”
“We are constantly told that our security situation is taken care of at the highest level and that the situation is good. If that is true, perhaps it behooves us to take a look at the things that affect citizens’ lives, for example terrorist attacks.”
Hadad compared two separate variables; the total number of terrorist attacks that have pockmarked the Netanyahu premiership from March 2009 to the end of 2017 and the rising trend that the graph he presented showed; and also the number of people who have been killed in terrorist attacks over the same period - which also showed a marked increase.
Where Netanyahu’s rule has coincided with an improvement in the statistics, is a reduction in the number of rockets fired. This conclusion, however, led to a secondary query about the success of the Iron Dome missile defense system and to what extent this protective umbrella - which then-Defense Minister Amir Peretz pushed very hard for - is the cause of the marked drop.
Hadad maintained that the Iron Dome’s success rate is approximately 90%. However, against an arsenal as large as the Iranian-proxy Hezbollah on Israel’s border with Lebanon and their suspected 100,000-150,000 rockets that means that at least 10-15,000 will get through. His main thrust for pointing this out, is that (as far as he had noticed) there is no public discourse about this threat. He wondered aloud, how much more investment it would take and by extension why it wasn’t being pushed harder, to ensure the Iron Dome’s success-rate was ratcheted up toward 99%.
“No one person has a monopoly on wisdom,” he said, “and to arrive at a perfect solution, we must open a public debate, because this is an issue that touches all of our lives.”