According to numerous accounts, the Zebra at the zoo in Gaza is a fake. It's actually a donkey spray-painted to look like that striped denizen of the African savannah.
Apparently the specimen is at least healthier than the poor one-eyed lion or some of the other animals who are left dead in their cages to rot.
No doubt the excuse for this paltry zoo is that the Israelis have blockaded Gaza for so long that the Gazans cannot find a way to bring in a zebra even if they could get one.
And while it is certainly true that Israeli expansionism has been the cause of much human discord (milder in form but not unlike that of the Americans vs. the Native Americans); and while it is also true that the Israeli national character, such as it may be, has been sharpened and made angry and even irrational by the constant expressed ambition of its neighbors to kill every Jew in the land; and while I am no particular "fan" of Israel (I have never been there and so have no meaningful opinion of the place physically); for while all these are true, it cannot be said that the fake zebra, put into context with other wrong-headeded deeds committed by those under the spell of Hamas and its murderous minions, does not represent a particular pinnacle of both pathos and stupidity on the part of its perpetrators.
Yet American progressives seem to have a queer penchant for taking up the cause of the Palestinians almost without qualification and certainly without sufficient embarrassment.
Awake, progressives, to the unfortunate character-traits one must associate with those who cannot seem to make a state when all the world would help them make one if only they would stop behaving in a manner so dimwitted it confounds all good sense. For these people, oppressed as they may be, also may be architects of their own wretched fate. They may fear Hamas and perhaps cannot shake them. But we would not accept this excuse from another people. We would say people get the leadership they deserve.
I have only a firm hope that the average Palestinian can one day wake up in a world where he neither terrorizes nor is terrorized, but I do know this: he cannot hope to succeed with fake zebras.
Also, he cannot hope to succeed with cartoon characters whose only hope is to kill every Jew. He cannot hope to succeed with mothers who declare their sons and daughters heroic upon strapping bombs to themselves and killing innocents who may or may not be Jewish so long as they are riding a bus in Tel Aviv at the wrong moment. He cannot hope to succeed with fevered declarations of hate for their neighbors, not all of whom hate them nor wish to see them destroyed. He cannot hope to succeed with tunnels where the import of arms rather than bread is the object, and where, when he can, fires a rocket randomly (and often in futility) at population-centers with no goal but to tear humans limb from limb. These acts together are the raiment of a people long in defeat and with little prospect for success.
American progressives can help the cause of peace in Palestine by making clear (to the Gazans, chiefly) there are certain basic standards that cannot really be compromised. Without giving quarter to Israeli religious fanatics who seek to aggrandize their faith and increase their number at the cost of another's, it must be made clear that while we may smile ruefully about the fake zebra, the rest of it--the Jew-hating cartoon-mouse; the gun-toting government of thugs; the rockets; the inexplicable inability to get real support from so-called "fellow Arabs"; the inability of Gazan "leaders" to negotiate in good faith even as its people practically starve; these deficiencies really put their cause, until such time as the deficiencies are improved significantly, beneath meaningful consideration.
Perhaps getting a real zebra at the zoo would be a humble start at rehabilitation--I am sure there is a zebra somewhere in the world that might be put to good use in the greater service of peace in Palestine.
In the meantime, I am told children seem to enjoy the painted donkey. And I will admit, thinking of children at a zoo and a fake zebra, that the world is a complicated, baffling place.
