I recently received again and from a different source an e-mail that lists out separately the winners of Noble prizes that are jewish compared to a listing of those that are “muslim” – actually those that are arabs.  Apparently this list, which shows about an 18 to 1 ratio of Jewish winners to muslim winners, is making its way around the Internet.  I had ignored it the first time, but seeing it the second time, though I am neither jew nor muslim, I had to respond.

First I tried to be ironic: 
  I don’t get the point the list is trying to make.  Is it “Muslims are stupid and Jews are smart?”Or is it “Jews publish in European languages that are widely read, but Muslims publish in languages and alphabets that the Nobel Commission doesn’t understand?”  Or is it “Jews contribute and Muslims don’t?” Or is it “Jews excel in categories that the Nobel Commission values, while Muslims and other ethnic groups excel in categories that are valued by other types of organizations?” Or is it just flat out bigoted Muslim bashing? 

But irony was lost on my reader, so here it is in plain speech:

It does not surprise me that this is getting circulated at a time when the Israelis are being accused of war crimes in Lebanon for their indiscriminate attacks on civilians there.  According to Reuters, “Killed in the conflict were 1,187 Lebanese civilians and 44 Israeli civilians.. Almost one third of the Lebanese civilian casualties were children under 13 years of age.” (That actually puts the multiplier at
27 to 1).  I realize that Hizbollah’s hands are not clean either.

To me the message that such a list sends is that a Jew (read “Israeli”) is somehow worth about 18 times more than a Muslim (read “Arab.” Of course,  most Muslims are not Arabs). In other words, the real subtext message here is that Jews are  more “valuable” than Muslims, and this superiority means that a dead Muslim is worth about one-fifth of a dead Jew – sort of a Dred Scott calculation. The bad things that follow from accepting that kind of thinking  range from genocide through ethnic cleansing to apartheid, to Nuremberg Laws, second-class citizen status and other forms of discrimination.  Ask Nelson Mandela.