The Exodus Has Been Cancelled…

Several thousand years after the Exodus from Egypt, the Nile crocodile has finally been offered employment in the Israeli public service. It will not return as one of Pharaoh’s creatures, an emblem of ancient empire, or an eleventh plague omitted by the Torah’s editors because the plot was already overcrowded. This time, the crocodile is expected to serve as prison infrastructure, because history has come full circle and submitted an invoice for 21 million shekels, an excavator and a ministerial decree.

A trench began to be dug beside Ketziot Prison for the intended deployment of Nile crocodiles. Prison officials visited a crocodile farm, public money was allocated, the administrative machinery started moving, and lawyers, wildlife experts and the Israel Nature and Parks Authority raised objections. The crocodile itself displayed exemplary professional discipline: it gave no interview, signed no open letter and did not accuse the minister of politicising the civil service.

The legal difficulty was that the crocodile appeared in the regulations as a wild animal rather than a prison officer. Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman therefore altered its status so that the reptile could enter national service without excessive attachment to zoology. The crocodile remained the same creature, equipped with powerful jaws, limited interest in constitutional law and no declared opinion about the coalition’s survival, but its paperwork became patriotic.

This is the beauty of governing by classification. When reality does not fit a ministerial fantasy, there is no need to abandon the fantasy; reality can simply be corrected on the appropriate form. The state apparatus did not encounter absurdity and stop. It politely asked whether absurdity possessed a tax-identification number and three certified copies of its fitness to perform deterrence.

The possibilities for further modernisation are almost unlimited. Pigeons could be reclassified as urban surveillance platforms, geese as border-security units, jackals as nocturnal reconnaissance patrols, ibexes as high-altitude vehicles and jellyfish........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)