If you haven’t seen them yet, here are the famous zebras of the Gaza zoo:
A recap, if you don’t want to watch the movie: Gaza has a small zoo. The zoo used to have two zebras, but alas both have starved to death (blame the Zionist opression here). The zoo can’t import new zebras (again, blame the Zionist oppression here), and so they’ve come up with a creative idea – let’s paint a couple of donkeys in black and white stripes and tell the kids these are zebras!
The story seems funny at a glance, doesn’t it? fooling people (well, the kids seem to be fooled) into thinking two simple donkeys are exotic African zebras. However, it does raise a few questions -
1. Why were the original zebras left to starve? obviously, there was food for donkeys going around, so you’d think they would have taken better care of the expensive zebras.
2. Why are they smuggling exotic wild animals through the tunnels? by the zoo owners’ confession, the tigress (which looks like a lioness to me), monkeys and other animals, have all been smuggled through the tunnels from Egypt. Considering Gazans are supposed to be suffering from lack of medicines and food, where do these people get the time and money to deal in illegal trade of wild animals?
3. Why do they keep the animals in such tiny cages? these are not proper habitats, not matter how you look at it.
4. Why do they let the kids beat the poor donkeys like that?
In short, dear People of Gaza, please take the time to do some reading online about animal welfare. You have internet access. You don’t HAVE to stay light years behind the rest of the world when it comes to these issues.
Sorry, but this truly does annoy me. The combination of mistreating animals along with putting the blame on Israel… just don’t keep a zoo if you can’t even make sure kids won’t beat up the donkeys.
on Oct 13th, 2009 at 5:19 pm
Seems to me the only reason is “anything is good to blame the Zionists”….
on Oct 19th, 2009 at 4:41 am
The ‘zebras’ look pretty damn good, too!
They wouldn’t leave the zebras to starve on purpose, would they. It wasn’t “to blame the zionists”, surely, that makes no logical sense.
As for ‘food going around to feed the donkeys’ — I doubt the donkeys were in the zoo in the first place. It’s such a common animal that it would be akin to putting a stray cat in a zoo, for example.
As for why they import exotic animals – Indeed, it does sound silly to think of a tigress (which, i agree, looks like a lioness!) being shoved down a tunnel.
But again, economics would suggest that there’s a demand for it. Which, well, there is: as everywhere, there’s a demand for entertainment. I guess Gazans are trying to offer their kids a semblance of a normal life amidst the rubble that Gaza has become.
Which doesn’t mean that there aren’t people indeed dying from lack of medicine. It’s unfair to blame them for not being all on the brink of starvation…
on Oct 21st, 2009 at 5:27 am
Ann, BBC on the 18 feb 2009 published this article http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7897385.stm about Gaza Zoo. According to the article and the recent Goldstone report the IDF destroyed 95% of the zoo, only 10 animals left alive over 400 but also killed thousands of chickens and animals in farms. (Read Goldstone report conclusions). Its not about blaming Zionists, the facts talk…
The mistreating of animals is cruel but so si the mistreating of human beings living in this big open air prison called Gaza. The siege of Gaza is cruel and against all humanitarian standards.