A German, an American, and an Israeli Walk Into a Bar
Published on Feb 22, 2026, filed under misc. (Share this post, e.g. on Mastodon or on Bluesky.)
A German, an American, and an Israeli walk into a bar. The bartender asks, “What’s the probability that you’ve served in the armed forces, that you’ve killed someone, and that the person you killed was unarmed?”
The German, the American, and the Israeli look at each other. “What’s an ‘armed force’?” asks the German. “I don’t know our stats,” says the American. The Israeli sizes up the bartender.
Just for ballpark numbers—i.e., this isn’t an academic study—I searched around to calculate the probabilities for these three and a few more random countries. These figures derive from aggregated conflict and fatality data, reflecting population-level exposure to lethal state violence (rather than direct tracking of individuals).
| Country | Probability of Random National Having Served in Military | Probability National Has Killed Someone | Documented Civilian Fatality Ratio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Germany | ~0.8% | ~0.00004% | ~30% |
| United States | ~5.8% | 0.0015%–0.0045% | 15%–45% |
| Israel | ~27.9% | 0.44%–1.22% | 83%–87% |
| Jordan | ~5.3% | 0.0017%–0.0052% | ~10% |
| Norway | ~4.5% | ~0.00002% | ~30% |
| Spain | ~0.9% | ~0.00001% | <5% |
| Uganda | ~0.63% | ~0.01% | 12–15% |
Note on probability: These figures represent the institutional outcome. While not every soldier is a front-line combatant, modern military operations are a collective effort. If a military’s operational record shows a high percentage of unarmed casualties, that moral and statistical weight can be argued to be shared by the entire force that enables those operations to function. The “probability national has killed” is calculated by filtering total veteran populations against historical combat-to-support (tooth-to-tail) ratios and reported engagement data.
Cross-checking surfaced coherent data on how probable it is that a given national has killed someone in military or policing contexts, including how likely it is that these were unarmed.
Calculation of probability of service also needed attention. It’s defined here as the probability that a randomly selected citizen has served in the armed forces of their country, which includes active personnel, reservists, and living veterans. The calculation was as follows, leading to the numbers above:
| Country | Population | Active and Reserve (Current) | Estimated Living Veterans | Total Population That Served | Probability Served |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Germany | 84 M | 214 K | 500 K | 714 K | 0.8% |
| United States | 335 M | 2.1 M | 17.5 M | 19.6 M | 5.8% |
| Israel | 9.8 M | 635 K | 2.1 M | 2.735 M | 27.9% |
| Jordan | 11.5 M | 160 K | 450 K | 610 K | 5.3% |
| Norway | 5.5 M | 70 K | 180 K | 250 K | 4.5% |
| Spain | 48 M | 132 K | 310 K | 442 K | 0.9% |
| Uganda | 52 M | 80 K | 250 K | 330 K | 0.63% |
Back to the bar:
It turns out, when you meet a random German today, there’s a very low chance they’ve even held a firearm. *
When you meet an American, the probability of service is 1 in 20. †
With an Israeli, you have a chance higher than 1 in 4 they’ve served in the military. What’s more, that service occurred within a framework where 83%–87% of tens of thousands of fatalities are civilians. Statistically, if an individual in that system has killed, they have likely killed someone unarmed. This is the mathematical reality of genocidal warfare.
This distinction is critical: While all military service involves the potential for violence, service in an active genocide transforms a statistical outlier into a demographic characteristic.
Sadly, this is not a joke. ‡
Sources
- Airwars
- CIA World Factbook
- Costs of War
- Israel Central Bureau of Statistics
- Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics
- The Military Balance
- Uganda Ministry of Defence and Veteran Affairs
- US National Center for Veterans Analysis and Statistics
* However, Germany is one of the largest arms exporters in the world that has also been supplying Israel during the ongoing Gaza genocide.
† However, America is the largest arms exporter in the world and also the largest supplier and supporter of Israel, thus having even more responsibility for the Gaza genocide than Germany.
‡ Since killing is no joke, and since there’s a significant chance that some nationals have been killing unarmed people—more bluntly, murdering civilians—, I recommend that you protect any open community. Decide and make clear to refuse entry to anyone having served in the armed forces of countries that are known to commit genocides. Expect people to leave if they can’t feel safe (and do leave if you aren’t protected from genocidal actors).
About Me
I’m Jens (long: Jens Oliver Meiert), and I’m an engineering lead, guerrilla philosopher, and indie publisher. I’ve worked as a technical lead and engineering manager for companies you use every day and companies you’ve never heard of, I’m an occasional contributor to web standards (like HTML, CSS, WCAG), and I write and review books for O’Reilly and Frontend Dogma.
I love trying things, not only in web development and engineering management, but also in philosophy. Here on meiert.com I share some of my experiences and perspectives. (I value you being critical, interpreting charitably, and giving feedback.)