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A Saudi Looks at Israel's Values

(Ha'aretz) Amnon Rubinstein - Commenting on the prisoner exchange deal between Israel and Hizballah, Khaled Jalabi wrote in Saudi Arabia's Al-Watan: "At first glance, it appears that Israel endured the humiliation of conducting negotiations with a faction and not a state, with the aim of freeing one individual in exchange for hundreds of prisoners. But only a child would miss the point: On a pure arithmetic reckoning, the meaning is that Israel viewed the three corpses and the one living man as being equivalent to any number of people, even if that total reached hundreds or thousands. In terms of moral logic, the moral is that, in Israel's view, the life of an Israeli, even one of Arab origin, is considered invaluable. In contrast, an Arab citizen can be thrown in prison for having surfed on the opposition's Web site...that shows how much a citizen's life is worth in the eyes of Arab regimes."
2004-03-09 00:00:00
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