Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
CHANGE IN RECENT PATTERNS
Let's take a look at the local situations in countries experiencing the great-
est increase in student enrollment. A good place to look is the State
Department website, which provides travel alerts and other information
relative to each country around the world. One note of caution, however:
Statistics are not perfect. They are only as good as the reporting system
providing the data, which are collated and analyzed before the charts,
tables, and graphs come out. Several years ago, David was discussing the
elements of a recently released Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
crime report with some of his colleagues. The report contained a section
on assaults perpetrated against law enforcement officers for that particu-
lar year. The report stated that there had been three assaults against Drug
Enforcement Administration (DEA) personnel during that same year. As
the four people discussing the report personally knew of many more
instances than that, it was safe to assume the statistics were incomplete to
say the least.
The State Department Report of Patterns of Global Terrorism, which
was released by the Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism on
May 21, 2001, lists the countries of the world along with the number of
reported incidents for the year 2000, the latest data available. Not having
any personal data ourselves, we looked intently at the figures, initially
accepting them at face value, until we got to the entry for Israel. Accord-
ing to this report, there were between six and eight terrorist incidents in
the State of Israel that year. We both reacted in the same way: Did they
mean last year or just last week? There is no possible way that this statis-
tic is even close to being accurate. Once you find such a glaring error, you
may safely assume that there are more lurking about somewhere. In addi-
tion, there is also the troubling habit of arguing what constitutes a terrorist
act in the first place. Most of you probably have heard the ridiculous cliché
that “one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.” Recall the
shooting at the El Al counter on July 4, 2001. Initially, the FBI said that
there was no link between that act and terrorism. An Egyptian male armed
with a gun decides to shoot to death two people at the ticket counter for
the national airline of Israel and they can't find any justification to clas-
sify this incident as a terrorist act?
1
Clearly, the reluctance to call this an
act of terror is not based on anything other than political sensitivities.
Our preference when making judgments of this type is more along the
