Israeli Mathematicians and Economists working in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem are hailing as a breakthrough the latest developments in the Israeli/Lebanon stand-off. On Wednesday the remains of two Israeli soldiers, whose capture sparked the Israeli-Lebanon war two years ago, were returned by Hezbollah in exchange for the release of five Arab prisoners, and the return of 8 other bodies of Hezbollah fighters. This has caused great excitement in the academic arena, where they have dedicated a huge amount of resources to trying to put a value on human life. "We finally have an approximate value of how much a Jew is worth in the Middle East," said Dr. Dekel Goldberg, one of the leaders in the field of Human Monetary Valuation (HMV), "a dead Israeli is worth exactly 2.5 live Arabs, and 4 dead ones. Previous studies have found that a living Arab is worth approximately 1.5 dead Arabs, and so we can conclude that a dead Israeli is worth 7.75 dead Arabs."

Dr. Goldberg's assessment has been questioned by others in the field, some saying that the entire concept of comparing and contrasting the different values of human life is a revolting process which demeans all human life, while others claim that the estimations of dead:alive Arab are twisted to an unfair level. "This whole process has been orchestrated by those in the community who want to skew the public view of living Arabs, making them seem much more important than they really are," claimed one prominent Jewish economist, "we have the old saying that the only good Arab is a dead Arab, which taken in an economic sense clearly shows that in terms of actual value, dead Arabs are indeed worth more than living ones. It is even easier to bulldoze the houses and build walls separating them from us when the majority are dead, as opposed to them being alive, which can require many hours of careful pushing and shoving". There has been criticism from the other side of the fence*, with many Muslim mathematicians claiming that these figures have no basis in reality. One leading Iranian academic, when questioned about the equations used to derive these results asked "Israel? Where's that?" and proceeded to stick his fingers in his ears and loudly sing Yellow Submarine while the situation was explained to him.

Even in the face of such opposition, Dr. Goldberg remains pragmatic. "I appreciate that there are differences of opinion, but we have reached this conclusion after years of study, and have many more years ahead of us. While we have a precise number for the Dead Israeli/Dead Muslim ratio, when converted to living Israelis it may be a very different result. In addition, we have a separate group in the University trying to nail down a more precise Jew:US Dollar conversion rate, and we hope to be trading on Wall Street based on this standard in the not-too-distant future."


(*Or twenty five foot tall concrete wall)