The most fun use of statistics is when you take two seemingly irrelevant numbers and use their comparison as a basis of analyzing a country. About ten years ago, the Economist created a “hubris index” by dividing (a) the estimation of a country’s international competitiveness based on what business leaders of that country say, and (b) the actual competitiveness based on objective numbers. Israel on that scale came out among the most arrogant, second only to New Zealand. The U.S. came in as most humble of them all.

In the Asian Times, Spengler offers us an “index of life-preference,” in which we may gauge a country’s attitude towards life by combining suicide rates with fertility rates. Among Western countries, Israel blows everyone else out of the water, with both the highest in fertility and the second-lowest in suicides. As with any simple statistic, this has its limitations: Israel’s fertility rate is exaggerated by the contribution of its Arab minority, whose attitudes towards life are influenced at least as much by the Arab world as by the West. Yet even if we factor this out, Israel would still top the rankings among Western countries.

Children and resistance to suicide are not the only elements in the affirmation of life, but there is still something really interesting about looking at the creation of life and the refusal to end one’s own as indicators. When Hamas parliamentarian Fathi Hammad praised the Palestinian ethos of suicide bombing and using civilians as human shields, he said to Israelis, “We desire death like you desire life.” Now we have numbers to back that up