Thursday, November 10, 2005

The Relative Value of Israeli Civilians

I'll comment on the UNESCO Cultural Diversity Treaty later, but a particular part of this post by Diana Moon is quite fascinating.

She theorizes, in essence, that Israel values its soldiers more highly than its civilians, due to the large amount of resources spent on training them. This. of course, is different from the calculus of most western countries, who view soldiers as more expendable, because, well, dying is what soldiers do.

According to Ms. Moon, this also has the effect of meaning that Israel values male lives more than female lives, as soldiers in combat tend to be male (in fact, the sex angle is what she is commenting on). This is opposed to most cultures, where male life is cheaper (because number of females is the limiting factor in the reproductive capacity of a tribe), but males are advantaged politically and socially.

This is an interesting thought that didn't really occur to me before.

That is all.

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