Our dumb times - revisited

In 2008, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's official news agency, Wafa, reported that Israel (read: Mossad) had released poison-resistant rats to drive Arab residents of Jerusalem out of their homes. If you took the news seriously you might think of it as a remarkable scientific achievement to train rats so that they could distinguish between Muslim, Christian and Jewish residents of a city - an achievement this columnist, acting on Mossad's behalf, once named "Project Mickey Mouse." 

In 2011, Saudi Arabia announced that it had "detained" a vulture carrying an Israeli band. The griffon vulture was carrying a GPS transmitter bearing the name of the Tel Aviv University and was condemned for being a part of a "Zionist espionage plot." Mossad's "Operation Angry Birds" had failed. We never learned whether Saudi courts had ruled to behead the spy vulture, or to sentence it to life in prison, or to force it to reveal the names of its collaborators. 

In 2012, a migratory bird (a common bee-eater) caused alarm in a Turkish village in the southeast after villagers thought it was an Israeli spy. According to press reports, villagers' suspicions were aroused when the bird was found dead in a field with a metal ring around its leg stamped "Israel." They called the police after deciding that the bird's nostrils were unusually large and may have carried a microchip fitted by Israeli intelligence for spying. That was probably "Operation Angry Birds II."

And in 2013, Turkish security officials detained (detained!) a kestrel on suspicion that it was spying for Israel. This spy was also quite self-revealing, as the metal ring on its leg carried the words "Tel Avivunia Israel." The local governor, who must also be an expert counter-espionage agent, decided...