More Crocodile Craziness

"Alligator Alcatraz" is re-invoked

I still cannot get over how crazy I was 25 years ago. Who on earth wrestles seven-foot alligators wearing a jacket and tie?! Crazy charedi zoorabbis, that’s who.

Six months ago, Ben-Gvir announced an idea to build crocodile-filled moats around prisons. At the time, I wrote a post, Crazy Crocodile Cretins, describing how absurd it was. There are vastly more effective ways to stop prisoners from escaping. This is why the thousands of prisons around the world do not use crocodiles.

At the time, Ben-Gvir claimed that he is following the precedent of “Alligator Alcatraz” in Florida. But of course if this credulous cretin would have spent a moment looking into it - which I assumed that since then, he did - he would have discovered that Alligator Alcatraz is known by that name simply because it is located in the Florida wetlands that are home to alligators, not because alligators are actually used to prevent escapes!

I thought that this ridiculous idea would simply fade away, but I was wrong. Ben-Gvir proceeded with making it happen.

First, he recruited the assistance of one of the most venal and unintelligent people in the Knesset, MK Idit Silman, who received the position of Minister of Environment from Likud in exchange for defecting from the previous government and causing its collapse. Crocodiles, like all wild animals in Israel, are legally protected, and may only be kept for educational, scientific or conservation purposes, so Idiot Siliman reclassified them as being “managed wildlife.” This in itself is not inherently problematic - crocodiles are not remotely endangered - but they would be very unlikely to be properly managed in the context of stuffing them into a moat around a prison in the desert.

Next, Ben-Gvir redirected 21 million shekels (approximately $7 million) from the National Security Ministry budget to fund the infrastructure and pilot project for this, with the eventual full-scale implementation being even more expensive. The argument was made that in the long run, it would save money by reducing the need for human guards.

This is sheer nonsense. As dangerous as crocodiles can be when hunting for food, they certainly cannot be relied upon to stop people escaping! They are sluggish, cold-blooded reptiles with a very slow metabolism. They do not need to eat particularly often, typically only weekly or monthly in the wild and sometimes going over a year without food.

In the famous scene in Live and Let Die where James Bond runs on top of the backs of crocodiles, the crocodiles were not fake - the stuntman playing Bond really did this! Millions of people go into crocodile-infested rivers in Africa all the time without being attacked. Reducing the number of human guards in favor of crocodiles is going to make it more likely that terrorists will escape, not less likely.

And it’s not even as though Israel has a problem with security prisoners escaping. It only ever happened once, in 2021, with them digging a tunnel. A crocodile-populated moat would be less effective and far more expensive than simply digging a much narrower moat right next to the wall and filling it with concrete!

I photographed this enormous crocodile in Botswana. Note how the buffalo is completely unperturbed.

But here’s where it gets even crazier. The Jerusalem District Court put a temporary hold on the plan due to all the different crazy aspects, including severe concerns regarding animal welfare, a lack of professional feasibility studies, procedural bypasses of legal authorities, and the fact that Ben-Gvir’s analogy to “Alligator Alcatraz” in Florida was baseless. And this is what Ben-Gvir responded:

In English, this reads: “Another routine day: again the justice system is on the side of the terrorists and against the Jewish People. This is what the elections will be about.”

What a horrifying claim. If you think that the crocodile idea is a harmful waste of public funds that won’t do anything to bolster security - and there is absolutely no reason to think otherwise - then you’re “on the side of the terrorists.”

Of course, this sort of hateful, nonsensical attribution of nefarious motives rather than the perfectly obvious reasons for someone’s actions is standard for the various parties in the government. For the charedim, if you’re against their blanket refusal to enlist and their insistence on being publicly funded, then you’re “anti-Torah.” For the Likud, if you’re against their negligence, corruption and cooperation with anti-Zionists, you’re a “Leftist.” But I suppose this sort of nasty nonsense works well for rallying the primitive base, and damn the consequences for society.

The crocodile idea is apparently particularly attractive to Ben-Gvir’s base, an audience that is infatuated by braggadocio, chest-thumping, and empty claims about strength, and which doesn’t know much about crocodiles or common sense. People need to be better-educated - including about how wild animals, while potentially unsafe and requiring respect and appropriate behavior, are not nearly as fearsome and dangerous as people imagine.

Which is a perfect segue for me to conclude with a recommendation that if you’re in Israel, come visit the Biblical Museum of Natural History! You can see our ten-foot stuffed crocodile, which was killed after it attacked someone who was behaving irresponsibly with it. And you can learn more about the amazing world of animals and Torah, as well as supporting our work in inspiring and educating people across the spectrum of society, by becoming a Friend of the Museum. Crocodiles might not be particularly effective as prison guards, but they make great teachers, and they need friends!