Opinion: Ben Gvir's crocodiles are the latest weapon in Israel's animal warfare on Palestinians

Opinion: Ben Gvir's crocodiles are the latest weapon in Israel's animal warfare on Palestinians

Earlier this month, Israel's National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir announced that Israel would use Nile crocodiles as prison guards for Palestinian political prisoners.

The programme will begin at Ketziot Prison, Israel's largest, in the Naqab (Negev) desert. The prison served as a concentration camp where thousands of Palestinians were incarcerated between 1988 and 1995 during the First Intifada. Palestinians knew Ketziot as Ansar III camp.

To facilitate this plan, Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman declared the crocodile a "cultivated wild animal". Under this new taxonomy, the reptiles will be released into moatsaround Israel's dungeons, where Palestinians are imprisoned and treated like animals.

Read more: Opinion: Ben Gvir's crocodiles are the latest weapon in Israel's animal warfare on Palestinians Opinion by 

Joseph Massad

Dozens of crocodiles lie stranded at an abandoned farm near the illegal Israeli settlement of Petzael in the occupied Jordan Valley on 18 January 2021 (Menahem Kahana/AFP) ...