A Moat of Populism: When National Security Returned to the Stone Age
This is a technological regression and an operational illusion. While modern security concepts rely on artificial intelligence systems, drones, peripheral radars, thermal sensors, and underground sensors, placing crocodiles is a primitive solution from the Middle Ages.
We were stunned to read the plan of ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Orit Struck to surround the Ketziot Prison with crocodiles. We thought it might be an unsuccessful joke, but in our country today, there is no stunt that will not see the light of day. And indeed, the decision to place crocodiles as a "living obstacle" around security prisons is much more than an absurd curiosity or another headline in the context of the latest media provocation. It is a concentrated reflection of a dangerous process taking place within state mechanisms: the transformation of the national security and environmental protection system from professional and evidence-based mechanisms into a Roman circus, where the politics of spectacle replaces common sense.
Beneath the grotesque guise of a medieval moat in the heart of the Negev lies a normative collapse that cuts across all branches of law and disciplines: from administrative and constitutional law, through criminal law and Jewish law, to international law, environmental legislation, as well as operational, budgetary, and image aspects. Indeed, it is necessary to carefully ensure that security prisoners, like prisoners in general, do not escape and endanger public safety, but this is absolutely not the way.
Legal and Constitutional Absurdity
As a starting point, administrative law defines the legal framework that examines the way decisions are made by the government, and within this — by the Ministry of National Security and the Ministry of Environmental Protection, when the principle of legality of administration, the cornerstone of this field, establishes that the executive branch has the right to act solely in accordance with the powers expressly granted to it by law. Naturally, there is not a trace in Israeli legislation of the authority to enter into contracts with a zoology of predators as part of means of incarceration, security, or environmental protection. Thus, the use of "deterrence measures" in the form of predatory reptiles not only goes beyond the bounds of reasonableness and proper measure to an extreme degree — it constitutes a serious and explicit excess of authority (Ultra Vires). Accordingly, this step is tainted by glaring illegality, which will invite petitions to the Supreme Court even before the first crocodile is delivered to its "new workplace."
On the constitutional and criminal levels, this idea undermines the foundations of the relationship between the state and those held in its custody. Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty is not suspended at the entrance to a security prison; it guarantees the fundamental rights of every person, including a prisoner who has been convicted. Punishment or detention in conditions that expose a person to constant danger to life from predatory animals constitutes cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, directly contrary to the spirit of the law and the rulings of the Supreme Court.
Principles of Jewish Law
In the face of these primitive concepts, it is worth turning to the principles of Jewish law, which also prohibits such a move in principle. A central moral and legal foundation in Halakha is the prohibition "do not place blood in your house" (Deuteronomy 22:8) — an explicit command imposing an active duty to prevent hazards and threats to life and to eliminate any factor that could lead to a catastrophe. Halakha is not limited to preventing passive environmental hazards, but establishes a categorical prohibition on creating active hazards in the form of wild beasts.
In the tractate Bava Kamma (15:2), a firm rule is established prohibiting a person from keeping a vicious dog or a wild beast unless it is chained with iron chains that prevent any possibility of damage and fear. Halakhic authorities throughout the generations — from Maimonides to the Shulchan Aruch — believed that keeping predators in a space where there is contact with people, and with the intention of instilling terror, is a serious violation of the laws of preserving life.
Operational Failure and International Consequences
The use of predatory animals as a security measure undermines the classical concept of deterrence and replaces it with a practice of spectacular punishment. Instead of creating deterrence, such a move produces the opposite effect: it frames security prisoners as fighters challenging a primitive mechanism of oppression, and thereby increases their symbolic prestige. A sociological analysis of totalitarian institutions shows that the deterioration to practices of this kind seeps back into the society that is incarcerating, creates collective numbness, and normalizes institutionalized violence.
In the international arena, the consequences are no less devastating. Israel is a signatory to central international conventions in the field of human rights protection. Turning a detention facility into a complex surrounded by predatory animals marks Israel as a country that grossly violates basic international norms. Such a step is not only an indelible moral stain, but a legal weapon that will be used by Israel's enemies who will hasten to attack the legality of the move before international institutions.
Even on a practical level, the proposal reveals a serious managerial and operational failure. A moat full of predatory animals does not distinguish between an escaped prisoner and a fallen guard, a special unit fighter during the suppression of an emergency, or a technician. In the event of a fire, an urgent medical case, or an earthquake, the moat and the predators in it will lethally burden rescue forces.
Technological Regression
While modern security concepts rely on artificial intelligence systems, drones, peripheral radars, thermal sensors, and underground sensors, placing crocodiles is a primitive solution from the Middle Ages. Moreover, crocodiles are cold-blooded reptiles; on cold winter nights in the desert, they enter metabolic slowdown and are almost inactive. Relying on a frozen reptile as a continuous security barrier means an operational failure and a lack of basic logic.
The idea of turning crocodiles into a security measure borders on sadistic abuse of animal rights. Keeping predators in harsh conditions of captivity, without a suitable habitat, is a serious violation of the Animal Welfare Law. In the budgetary aspect, it is a blatant waste of public funds in favor of media pyrotechnics, while the real operational needs of the system remain starved for budget.
The crocodiles in the moat are not intended to deter the security prisoners — they are intended to feed the voters' feed. This is a politics of violent symbols that replaces a professional security concept with a display of feigned barbarism. We want to believe that this delusional idea will be shelved as quickly as it came. The crocodiles may remain outside the moat, but the barbarism and moral disregard they represent threaten to devour the public institutions that still remain standing.
Prof. Mohammed Wattad, Professor (Law), President of the Academic College of Ramat Gan. Dr. Tal Mimran, faculty member at the Academic College of Safed and Senior Research Fellow at the Tachlit Institute. Elyakim Rubinstein, President of the Academic College of Ashkelon, and former Deputy President of the Supreme Court and Attorney General of the Government.
