Israel as a Hot Spot on the Global Map of Terrorism

Israel is usually perceived as a terror-stricken state. Yet it is ranks 29^th, albeit  out of about 200 countries, on the list of terror-stricken states in terms of number of casualties (1970-2014). Is this (only) a matter of perception vs reality, or perhaps there is something else at play.

Statistics can be misleading. If we calculate the multi-annual average of casualties per population size, Israel is in 15^th place. This is so because Israel is a very small country relative to other terror-stricken countries, therefore the experience of terror threat in Israel is much intensive. In fact this is not surprising since research shows that there is a relationship between population size and number of attacks. Thus, most years the rate of casualties per population size in Israel was higher than that in the three countries with the highest number of casualties in the world (see graph). Moreover, Israel is among only four countries in the world in which at least one terror attack was documented in their territory every year during the period 1970-2014 (with the U.S., Lebanon and Greece 

So Israel is a hot spot on the global map of terrorism, but not only, or necessarily, for the reasons 

.usually associated with terror attacks in Israel