In the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, the shafan is listed as being unkosher since it is one of few animals that chews its cud but does not have split hooves. Although in modern Hebrew shafan usually means “rabbit,” it is far more likely that these verses refer to the rock hyrax. (The arnevet mentioned in these passages is likely a rabbit.) These creatures, according to Proverbs 30:25, “are but a feeble folk, yet make they their houses in the rocks.” Judy Siegel-Itzkovich describes Israeli scientists’ most recent discoveries about this peculiar species:

Hyraxes are medium-sized, plant-eating mammals with soft, gray-brown, or yellowish fur that look like a robust, oversized guinea pig or a rabbit with rounded ears and no tail. Native to Africa and the Middle East, the species are common on hills in Israel and have some unpleasant characteristics.

They bite, can spread rabies and, when bitten by sandflies, can transmit a parasite, causing a disease characterized by irregular bouts of fever, weight loss, enlargement of the spleen and liver and anemia that could be fatal if left untreated.

Their redeeming feature is that the males sing beautiful courting songs to female hyraxes. A new study on animal behavior that involved researchers from Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan has linked reproductive success in male rock hyraxes to their ability to maintain rhythm during songs.

Unlike many other animals known to communicate through song, hyraxes usually sing alone, according to Vlad Demartsev, who collected the data for this study while at Tel Aviv University. . . . “Their songs have regional dialects, so individuals living in proximity sing more similarly to each other,” he said. “They tend to sing in crescendo [getting louder as the song progresses] and reach peak complexity towards the end of their songs, maybe to keep the audience engaged and listening to the signals.”

As this newsletter noted last week, Gaza is not suffering from famine, and the efforts to suggest that it is—which have been going on since at least the beginning of last year—are based on deliberate manipulation of the data. Nor, as Shany Mor explains, does international law require Israel to feed its enemies:

Article 23 of the Fourth Geneva Convention does oblige High Contracting Parties to allow for the free passage of medical and religious supplies along with “essential foodstuff, clothing, and tonics intended for children under fifteen” for the civilians of another High Contracting Party, as long as there is no serious reason for fearing that “the consignments may be diverted from their destination,” or “that a definite advantage may accrue to the military efforts or economy of the enemy” by the provision.

The Hamas regime in Gaza is, of course, not a High Contracting Party, and, more importantly, Israel has reason to fear both that aid provisions are diverted by Hamas and that a direct advantage is accrued to it by such diversions. Not only does Hamas take provisions for its own forces, but its authorities sell provisions donated by foreign bodies and use the money to finance its war. It’s notable that the first reports of Hamas’s financial difficulties emerged only in the past few weeks, once provisions were blocked.

Yet, since the war began, even European states considered friendly to Israel have repeatedly demanded that Israel “allow unhindered passage of humanitarian aid” and refrain from seizing territory or imposing “demographic change”—which means, in practice, that Gazan civilians can’t seek refuge abroad. These principles don’t merely constitute a separate system of international law that applies only to Israel, but prolong the suffering of the people they are ostensibly meant to protect:

By insisting that Hamas can’t lose any territory in the war it launched, the international community has invented a norm that never before existed and removed one of the few levers Israel has to pressure it to end the war and release the hostages.

These commitments have . . . made the plight of the hostages much worse and much longer. They made the war much longer than necessary and much deadlier for both sides. And they locked a large civilian population in a war zone where the de-facto governing authority was not only indifferent to civilian losses on its own side, but actually had much to gain by it.