I'm writing this post in response to a friend of mine here in Yad Binyamin. He's decided that he wants to buy himself a slave. From Darfur. He figures that he will undoubtedly be improving the quality (and probably length) of his slave's life. He can't just bring some random guy over from Darfur, because no government would ever allow random Darfurian immigrants like that. So the only solution is to buy the man as his personal slave.Despite my protests - and trust me, I protest - he claims that my arguments about the immorality of slavery are at best self-serving. Who cares about the morals and ethics of owning another human being when a person's life is at stake? For all my objections (he's somewhat persistent), he argues that in the end, whose plan works in the best interest of the poor man from Darfur: his, which brings him to a life of servitude but good treatment in Israel, or mine, which leaves him at the mercy of the new Dictator (er, President - hailed by the Arab League and under indictment by the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges) of Sudan?
He's been bugging me to post this "moral dilemma" for a while now - so here it is. If you can propose a convincing argument (comment) as to why he should not try and buy a Darfurian slave, where both parties benefit - I'd really appreciate it.
It seems to all hinge on what the terms of the "slavery" will be. Will there be a quid pro quo whereby your friend compensates the slave X amount in exchange for a finite amount of work over a set period of time. If your friend is paying the person's airfare and other costs to leave Darfur and then provides room and board, and possibly a stipend, in exchange for a reasonable amount of work, both in hours and type of labor, I don't see much of a moral problem. Of course, I have no idea what Israel law has to say about this.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure there are plenty of ethical arguments that can be made, but the one that most readily springs to mind is from Star Trek, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." It is more important to kill slavery than to save a single individual.
ReplyDeleteBut the better argument in this particular case is that would be a terrible PR move. Can you imagine the New York Times headline, "Israeli Jews enslaving Africans"?