Crunching Numbers With Deborah Orr

AP reports that Al-Qaida is offering three kilos of gold worth $160,000 to anyone who kills the US ambassador to…

By Pesach Benson December 31, 2012

AP reports that Al-Qaida is offering three kilos of gold worth $160,000 to anyone who kills the US ambassador to Yemen. A bounty of $23,000 was also placed on the lives of US military personnel there.

Somewhere out there, I suspect columnist Deborah Orr is seething at Israeli “racism” and the idea that Israeli lives are “worth” more. Last year, a Saudi prince offered $1 million to anyone who kidnaps an Israeli soldier.

So when you do the math and apply Orr’s twisted logic (from the Gilad Shalit exchange) to today’s Al-Qaida bounty, you find that one Israeli soldier is “worth” 6.25 US ambassadors or 43.48 American soldiers.

Never mind that the Arabs are the ones setting the bar on lopsided prisoner swaps and vile bounties.

(Image via Flickr/Ironchefbalara)

© Divuach Ne’eman R”A, 2025

Pesach Benson

Pesach Benson

A Baltimore native, Pesach was with HonestReporting from 2011 to 2020. He edited the Israel Daily News Stream and authored the e-book, Red Lines: HonestReporting’s 8 Categories of Media Bias. Before moving to Israel in 1995, he worked as a reporter for the Baltimore Jewish Times. Pesach has a B.A. in political science from the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, where he was executive editor of the campus newspaper.

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