But we can go too far, worrying\u00a0more about less likely things, than we do about more serious dangers that are faced on a daily basis. The fact of the matter is that it has been very rare for an American student to be the victim of an attack in Israel. If we are inclined to do so, we can calculate the odds.\u00a0We can check the statistics<\/a>, and learn that at the height of the intafada period 2000-2006, one\u2019s odds of being killed in a terrorist attack were lower for that entire period<\/em>\u00a0if one lived in Israel,\u00a0than one\u2019s odds were of being killed in\u00a0a single year<\/em> period as a victim of a homicide if one lived in Canada. And\u00a0the likelihood of either of those two scenarios is much, much lower again than one\u2019s likelihood of dying in a traffic accident in the United States in a given year.<\/p>\n Yes, a terrorist attack with an American fatality has been in the news. I get that. But\u00a0I have seen in the news several times since I\u2019ve been living in Indiana that an exchange student has died here in this state. And there\u00a0have been at least two<\/a>\u00a0deaths from\u00a0shootings in Indianapolis<\/a> in the past two days.<\/p>\n What I don\u2019t understand is how people can think that Israel is too dangerous for their child to go to, but it is safe for them to live and study in Indianapolis. Do they not understand that their perception of Israel is akin to someone judging the city of Indianapolis based on this article<\/a>?<\/p>\n Can anyone help me understand my students\u2019 parents, and perhaps find ways to communicate more effectively about this with them? Is it just my own life experience that helps me to understand this topic differently than others do? I grew up in New York City, and was always surprised when\u00a0people from elsewhere asked \u201cHow can you live there? Isn\u2019t it dangerous?\u201d That helped me to understand that people\u00a0sometimes see only the crimes and incidents on the news, and never realize that these things are the exception and not the rule. I also lived in Belfast, Northern Ireland during the troubles, and there too realized that not only was life largely a matter of going about one\u2019s business with the occasional explosion in the distance, but one could\u00a0walk down the Falls Road\u00a0as a group of foreign students, something the local Protestants would never do. Northern Ireland\u00a0was a lot like Israel and the West Bank: checkpoints, soldiers with machine guns, fear of terrorism, bombings. And it was a lot like Israel and the West Bank: most of the time, very warm and friendly people who went about their lives and made the best of difficult circumstances.<\/p>\n I felt safer in Northern Ireland than I do in Indianapolis. And I feel safer\u00a0when I am visiting\u00a0Israel and the West Bank than I do on a daily basis in Indianapolis.<\/p>\n Can anyone help me understand why\u00a0this is not\u00a0clear to other people? Do you actually have to live and travel extensively abroad in order to grasp this point? Do you actually have to live in another country where there are few guns in circulation to realize that an American city is one of the most terrifying places to live on Earth, short of an actual war zone \u2013 and yet also to realize that, even so, most of us who reside in an American city will live out our days without being shot?<\/p>\n![\"Falls](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/files\/2016\/03\/Falls-Road-300x200.jpg\")