Beaten down by decades of moral-equivalency abuse, Israelis treated the case of the gorilla killed at the Cincinnati Zoo this week as they do any debate surrounding the legitimacy of firing a weapon.
With an IDF soldier on trial for shooting a subdued Palestinian terrorist to death — and a brouhaha that attracted international attention while causing domestic angst — the issue of whether an ape suffered a wrongful death pales in comparison.
This is not to say that the Hebrew-speaking media did not consider the case of Harambe the gorilla worthy of coverage. On the contrary, the item captivated Israeli news outlets as much as it did others.
But what was absent in the discussion in the studios of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem was the vitriol against the zookeepers in Ohio, who had been faced with a painful choice that had to be made in unfortunate circumstances. When a 3-year-old boy fell into the enclosure of a 420-pound ape — and was swung and dragged every which way, into and around water — the life of one was suddenly thrust into the balance against that of the other.
What made the event particularly tragic for all concerned was that the gorilla did not appear to be attacking the toddler with purposeful aggression; in fact, he seemed confused about what to do, and had he been female, the whole episode might have turned out differently. But his immense strength, grip and erratic movements could have killed the child, even inadvertently. Anyone watching the video of the events can see this clearly. Indeed, the little boy is unlikely to have survived even minutes more in the clutches of the 17-year-old silverback.
Furthermore, according to the zoo, shooting the gorilla with a sedative dart would first have agitated him and would have taken time to take effect, and therefore was not an option. So the only recourse was to rescue the boy at the expense of the ape.
Animal-rights activists and many other Americans responded to this life-saving gesture as though it was an act of first-degree slaughter. Indeed, “murder” was the word bandied about on social media — aimed both at the zoo and at the child’s mother, who was accused of being at fault for not preventing her son from climbing the fence of the enclosure and falling in. The harsh criticism culminated in a Change.org petition titled “Justice for Harambe,” which has garnered hundreds of thousands of signatures.
