Deborah Orr “chosen people” update:Israel to free 25 Egyptians for 1 Jew, thus Jews 25 X more valuable than Egyptians

H/T AKUS

As we’ve noted (here and here) the Guardian’s Deborah Orr has advanced an argument based on one of the most peculiar examples of moral calculus I’ve ever come across. 

Orr wrote:

“It’s quite something, the prisoner swap between Hamas and the Israeli government that returns Gilad Shalit to his family, and more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners to theirs…[which is] an indication of how inured the world has become to the obscene idea that Israeli lives are more important than Palestinian lives….“At the same time, however, there is something abject in [Hamas’s] eagerness to accept a transfer that tacitly acknowledges what so many Zionists believe – that the lives of the chosen are of hugely greater consequence than those of their unfortunate neighbors.”

As I noted previously, the logic is almost beyond comprehension, and implies that Israel should have demanded that Hamas not submit to the blatant  racism of allowing over a thousand of their terrorist free in exchange for Gilad Shalit, and accept a one for one prisoner exchange, in the name of anti-racism.

Recently, the Guardian reported the following on the American Israeli,  Ilan Grapel, detained in Egypt since June 12, on charges of spying:

Egypt is to release a US-Israeli citizen held since June on suspicion of spying, according to a statement issued by the office of prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Monday evening.

Israel will release 25 Egyptian prisoners in exchange for Ilan Grapel, who has been held without charge since he was arrested in Cairo on June 12.

So, employing Orr’s moral logic, both Egypt and Israel must believe that an Israeli life is 25 times more valuable than an Egyptian life – indicating a racism rate not nearly as odious as the relative worth of Israelis to Gazans, where Israeli life is 1027 times more valuable. 

The one truly remarkable thing is that such clearly intuitive reasoning has, until now, eluded the greatest ethicists and moral logicians of our time.

Orr will no doubt be teaching her Israeli Racism Calculation Theory at an Arab funded UK university soon.   

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