Wild Jews

Pharaoh Nuff, ruler of the Upper and Lower Egyptian Kingdoms (2865-2812 BCE) is depicted in this temple fresco accompanied by his faithful Jew.

The common Domestic Jew (Jewsiphus desertii habilis) is believed to have first been reared many thousands of years before the present day by the Ancient Egyptians from the wild Desert Jew which still exists in remote parts of the Saharan region to this day, where it survives on a diet of small rodents such as gerbils. When the Egyptians first began to farm grain, they would have suffered terribly from mice and rat infestations in their granaries since rodenticides had not yet been developed. It can only have been a matter of time before Desert Jews identified such places as productive hunting grounds and farmers would soon have noticed the animal's highly effective skill at hunting smaller creatures, so they would have taken steps to try to ensure the Jews stayed nearby such as feeding them during times when rodent populations were low and by allowing them warm, safe places in which to sleep and raise their young.

Desert Jews are known for their graceful movements and beautiful coats, which are usually of a golden colour; however, one subspecies - J. desertii josephus - may have a coat of many colours, which led to it being recorded in the Bible. Such characteristics mean it cannot have taken long for the Desert Jew to gain admirers who appreciated it for its beauty in addition to its rodent-hunting ability, and so we can assume that the Egyptians began to keep them as pets very soon after they first domesticated the animal.

Distribution

Once common throughout North Africa, the Desert Jew now inhabits only those areas depicted in light green on this map. The rare Jewsephus desertii josephus subspecies is almost extinct and is found only in the regions depicted in red.

In Biblical times, the Desert Jew was a common species throughout Egypt and most regions of Saharan Africa, from the Atlantic coast in the west to the Red Sea in the east and from the shores of the Mediterranean as far south as the Central African rainforests. We know from the chronicles of the Crusaders that populations also existed in the Middle East, with the species being well-known in ancient Palestine, and from 14th century travellers that the Bedouin of the Rub' al Khali (modern Saudi Arabia's Empty Quarter) were familiar with the animal.

Modern populations

Although feral populations are known throughout Europe, Asia, Australasia, the Americas and on the Moon, of which some are estimated to number well over a million individuals, the largest population of truly wild Desert Jews in the modern world is now to be found in Israel where zoologists estimate there to be around 3.5 million breeding pairs. Fossils have been found in various parts of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya in addition to Egypt; but not in Israel or on the Arabian peninsula despite extensive paeleontological surveys in the region, suggesting that the species originated in North Africa and migrated to those areas.

This wall fresco, from a temple near present day Cairo, shows the high value placed upon Jews in Ancient Egypt prior to the Plagues - equal to ten fish and an iPod. Only the very rich could have afforded a Jew of their own.

Diet

Desert Jews are obligate carnivores, meaning that their physiology is suited to a diet chiefly consisting of the flesh of other animals. They will, however, also consume plant matter and are particularly fond of lokshen, a type of noodle that grows wild throughout the Saharan region and into Arabia, which may make up a large percentage of what they eat. They will also seek out hamentaschen, a triangular fruit closely related to the poppy flower, the seeds of which it resembles in flavour, and many types of bread. Desert Jews are unable to produce taurine (an amino acid essential to them) in their bodies, and as a result even those that consume mostly vegetable matter will eat meat at certain times, such as at Pesach (Passover) when they will hunt and kill sheep. This has led to their persecution by farmers, since they will eat only the sheep's shank and leave the rest of the animal, which can then not be sold at market. Nearly all Desert Jews enjoy the taste of fish and will eat them throughout the year, usually in the form of smoked salmon and pickled herrings. Fish is especially eaten at Rosh Hashana, when Desert Jews will migrate great distances in search of those types they have a particular liking for.

People who keep domestic Desert Jews as pets need to be aware that certain common houseplants are highly poisonous or even fatal to the animal. Examples include the Easter Lily, which can cause kidney damage, and the Philodendron.

Jewnip

Jewnip is a herb commonly found in those regions from which the Desert Jew originates and also sold in dried form in pet stores. The herb has a narcotic effect on the animal if it is sniffed, causing the Jew to act in a way very similar to that of a human who has consumed an intoxicating beverage. Most Desert Jews react in this way to the plant, though some appear unaffected by it. It appears to not to be harmful to them, and the effects will usually wear off after half an hour or so.

Physiology

A wild Desert Jew hunting on farmland and displaying its Jew Claw, used with deadly effect when killing prey.

Claws

All Desert Jews, whether wild or feral, are equipped with razor-sharp retractable claws which may up to three inches long. In their relaxed position, the claws are sheathed within the toe pads in order to keep them sharp and to prevent the Jew from becoming stuck while traversing certain terrain such as carpet. Jews can voluntarily extend their claws at any time such as while hunting or fighting or when they decide they dislike an item of furniture and wish to rip it to pieces. Most Desert Jews have five claws on each hand and foot; however, due to an ancient mutation termed polydactylism, some Jews have six or seven claws. This is particularly common amongst domestic and feral Desert Jews found in the east coast of Canada and those of the north western coast of the USA. The fifth claw on each hand, proximal to the other claws, is the well-known Jew Claw.

Mouth

Desert Jews have highly-developed teeth which have evolved to both kill prey and to chew meat, matzah and latkes. The long canine teeth are precisely shaped so that, when the Jew seizes its prey, they will slide effortlessly between the vertebrae of the neck and bring immediate paralysis or death - thus equipped, Jews are able to hunt larger prey than other animals of their size. The carnassial teeth, of which the Jew has one either side of each jaw, act as extremely efficient shears, enabling the animal to slice through even the chewiest bagels. They also have sharp spines along their tongues, known as papillae, which the Jew uses when grooming its fur and to scrape lox and cream cheese off slices of chollah. Jews are able to create a wider variety of vocal noises than many other mammals, facilitated by an oral structure remarkably similar to that of humans and have even been known to mimic human speech, expertly reproducing all the noises involved with the exception of the W sound, which is invariably mispronounced as V, the th sound which is pronounced as z and certain other sounds, for example a as e. Hence, a commonly-heard Desert Jew call is, "Zet is vot I em saying, vill you listen already!" This characteristic has led to several Jews being mistaken for Dracula in the past.

Skeleton

In common with humans and most other mammals, Desert Jews possess seven cervical vertebrae. Unlike humans they have thirteen thoracic vertebrae (humans have twelve) and twenty two or twenty three caudal vertebrae making up their tails which are used as an aid to balance when walking on narrow surfaces such as tree branches (humans have three to five, except for those from places like Cornwall and rural Alabama who may have as many as thirty). They also have free-floating clavicle bones, unlike those of a human which are fixed, which allows them to squeeze into any space large enough to admit their heads.

Ears

Desert Jews' ear movements are controlled by thirty two separate muscles, allowing them to direct them toward a source of sound and home in on it. This also allows them to fold their ears flat to their heads if they find themselves in a threatening or dangerous situation - this means that these valuable organs, which the Jew uses to locate prey, can be protected from damage that may occur to them such as that caused by another Jew's claws or by thorns. Their hearing is far superior to that humans, explaining why they are able to hear the sound made by a penny falling to the ground even if they are a great distance away. It is thought that they can hear sounds up to approximately 64kHz, much higher than a human or even a dog is able to, which allows them to detect the very faint high-pitched noises emitted by the rodents upon which they prey.

A Jew's eye. Looks evil, doesn't it?

Eyes

A Desert Jew's vision is not so keen as that of a human, which explains why it is that all Jews wear spectacles. However, their night vision is extremely good, enabling them to study Torah even if they forget to switch on a lamp before the Shabbat begins.

Skin

The skin of a Desert Jew fits its body very loosely, allowing it to turn and attack a predator even if it has caught hold of the Jew in its mouth. This is particularly evident on the back of the neck, known as the scruff, which the mother Desert Jew uses to pick up her cubs should she be required to move them from place to place, such as if the litter is threatened by predators and must be transported to a safer location.

Behaviour

Fighting

When fighting, either with an individual of its own species or another animal, a Desert Jew will raise its fur and arch its back to make itself appear larger and more threatening. Male examples will also display their peyot, the distinctive curled sideburns either side of the head. Aggression during fighting usually takes the form of blows to the head of the opponent and a fight will usually last just a few seconds until one individual feels its opponent is stronger, at which point it will escape. In some cases, if a fight lasts long enough, a Jew may throw itself to the ground and lie on its back so as to be able to rake at the opponent's body using the sharp claws of its feet with its powerful legs.

Reproduction

Female Desert Jews are polyoestrous - ie; receptive to males at several times during a year. In the case of a female who has produced a litter previously, this receptive period will last between four to seven days, if she has not it may go on longer. If a female wishes not to produce young, during oestrus she will temporarily leave the colony, a habit known to zoologists as niddah, and will avoid contact for the full seven days.

Several males will be attracted to, and will fight over, a receptive female. The victor wins the right to mate, but only after the female has ceremonially rejected him at least once. He will then have to prove that he is worthy, either in the field of business or in academia, for her to accept him and he will then be permitted to mate with her. After mating, the female thoroughly washes herself in a process termed mikveh by zoologists - any male that attempts to mate with her at this time will be savagely attacked.

The gestation period lasts for approximately 64 days, at the end of which the female Desert Jew gives birth to an average of four cubs. Domestic cubs - known as kittens - are ready for separation from the mother when they are twelve weeks old, whereas wild cubs will leave whenever they are ready to do.

Decline in Popularity in Ancient Egypt

As is well-known, in ancient times Egypt was subjected to a series of terrible plagues which brought great despair and misery to the nation. It has long been understood that these afflictions were thought to be in some way connected to Desert Jews, but in recent years it has become apparent that there may have been a natural explanation for such events, rather than their being the work of God, and we shall take a closer look at these explanations here.

Plague of Blood

According to Exodus 7:14 - 7:25 the first plague was one of blood (or, as the Jews themselves would have it, דָם). The Nile, upon which the Egyptians depended for both water and fish, turned to blood which made it undrinkable and caused the fish to die, though it is recorded that the Pharaoh's coffers were swelled due to an influx of vampire tourists. However, according to Professor Thomas Oldefart, Emeritus Professor of Archaeology and Egyptology at Halphbayke College in Cambridge, blood is a mistranslation. He claims that scrolls discovered in the Dead Sea area in 1937 show that the plague was in fact one of להקיא, which directly translates as vomit. This has led Prof. Oldefart and other researchers to put forward the theory that the Desert Jews had been infected with gastrointestinal parasites after a particularly hot summer caused a huge decline in the rodent population which led to them consuming mice that were already dead in order to survive. The idea may seem far-fetched to those who prefer conventional wisdom, but it does also tally with the Jews' refusal to eat the flesh of an animal that has died of natural causes or as a result of other predatory animals, which is something Jews will not do to this day. He suggests that as a result, the Jews became nauseous and every morning those Egyptians who kept them either to kill rodents or as pets would have had to clear up puddles of sick from their kitchen floors. In those days, all household refuse was disposed of by simply tipping it into the Nile and so, bearing in mind the enormous number of Desert Jews kept by the culture, it is not hard to imagine a situation in which the river became so polluted with vomit it was no longer able to support piscatorial life.

Plague of Frogs

"...He did cause a great body of water to be formed in the dry regions several cubits from the riverbanks." Using revolutionary new software developed at Halphbayke College, Cambridge, Prof. Oldefart has been able to produce this impression of what the Pharaoh's inland lake, created after the Nile became "...all ikky and yuck" (see text) may have looked like.

The second plague was one of frogs or צְּפַרְדֵּעַ (Exodus 7:26-8:11). Prof. Oldefart has in his possession a scroll which he excavated from a trench at Muhafazat ad Daqahliyah, dated to around 2500 BCE. He has painstakingly translated the entire document, which is written in a mixture of Egyptian hieroglyphics, Hebrew and Aramaic, into modern English and found the following very telling paragraph:

“ And when Pharaoh saw that the Nile had become all ikky and yuck and all the little fishies had died, he did cause a great body of water to be formed in the dry regions several cubits from the riverbanks. And lo, it was done. And he caused it to be filled with fishes, so that his people might eat them. ”

Prof. Oldefart is the proud owner of a Domestic Jew himself, and says that he has frequently observed the creature capturing frogs from the pond in his garden. He also says that the animal never eats the frogs and believes that amphibians are unpalatable to Jews which may be the reason that, as is the case with flesh from animals dead upon discovery, Jews will not eat frogs or toads. However, this does not prevent his Jew from catching them and bringing them into the house where it deposits them on the carpet, possibly as a gift or offering to the Professor. "We know that the Ancient Egyptians kept large numbers of Desert Jews," he says. "If there were frogs in the lake that the Pharaoh created, they may well have caught them and taken them into the palace. Assuming there were as few as twenty Jews - and there were probably many times this number - who caught four frogs every day, before long the palace would have been full of 'em."

The Plague of Gnats

Exodus 8:12 - 8:15 recounts the tale of the next plague as being one of small biting insects, כִנִּים, which is commonly translated as gnats. However, the term can also refer to either lice or fleas. Prof. Oldefart: "Domestic Desert Jews frequently become infested with fleas every summer. My Jew had 'em last year, and they were a proper pain in the arse I can tell you. My missus said if I didn't do something about 'em, she'd make me choose - either she went or the Jew did. So naturally, I packed her suitcase and told her to sling her hook." If Ancient Egypt suffered a particularly harsh summer, one in which it became so hot all the mice died (see "Plague of Blood", above) it is not hard to imagine that fleas on the Jews would have become a major problem for the Egyptians.

The Plague of Flies

Egypt was, following the plague of fleas, hit by a plague of flies, says Exodus 8:16 - 8:28. If the Desert Jews had become nauseous due to parasites as a result of consuming dead mice, they may well also have developed acute diarrhoea. Flies would have been attracted to the palace in great numbers as a consequence of this.

The Plague of Pestilence

A direct result of the previous plague, pestilence would have been common amongst the Egyptians after they ate food which flies had walked on right after they'd been walking on Desert Jew faeces. Clever though they undoubtedly were - after all, they invented the steam engine and built Stonehenge - the people of Ancient Egypt were not aware of the existence of germs. Having already endured a series of plagues directly connected to the Jews living in the midst, they may well have blamed them for this one too. Their tendency to do so suggests that the Jews, at first considered useful and later loved so much that they were almost revered as gods, were beginning to become unpopular.

The Plagues of Incurable Boils and Hail

Prof. Oldefart openly admits that further evidence is required to support his theory that the Egyptian habit of keeping Desert Jews as pets was the direct cause of the plagues suffered by the nation in ancient times, especially with regard to the plagues of boils and hail described in Exodus 9:1 - 9:7 and 9:13 - 9:35. "I have not yet been able to demonstrate how plagues of these types could have been caused by small, furry creatures like Jews," he says. "However, I have wondered on more than one occasion if another mistranslation, of שְׁחִין and בָּרָד, has taken place. Maybe they should actually be translated as clawed-up furniture."

The Plague of Locusts

Desert Jews will hunt just about any small animal, not just rodents, including insects such as grasshoppers and locusts. The Jews of Ancient Egypt would have been no different and would have caught massive amounts of the insects whenever they appeared in the land, so they may have taken them into houses to make gifts for their owners, just like they did with the frogs. The Egyptians would have been irritated by the annoying hopping insects and would have found them difficult to capture and eject from buildings, which may have caused some of them to turf the Jews out of their homes deciding that this was one plague too many and maybe they'd get a dog instead. Finding themselves as strays on the street, the Jews would have been reluctant to catch locusts in the future. This also explains the fact that, as is the case with the frogs we have already looked at, Jews will still not eat locusts to this day.

The Plague of Darkness

Prof. Oldefart is a little hazy when it comes to the following plague, covered in Exodus 10:21 - 10:29. "OK," he says. "That one's pretty hard to blame on the Jews too. But if you look at history, all sorts of things have been blamed on the buggers with no evidence whatsoever so I'm sure I'll come up with something pretty convincing before long."

The Desert Jew's natural ability to kill mice and other small rodents would have been noticed by the Ancient Egyptians, many millennia before the present day. Jews came to be so highly valued in the Pharaoh's granaries that they were worshipped as semi-divine. Until recently, they still kept in many parts of the world for this purpose, and were the most popular pet animal.

Death of the Firstborn

The final plague, of which we learn in Exodus Ex. 11:1 - 12:36 is that of מַכַּת בְּכוֹרוֹת - the first-born son of each and every Egyptian family died. This may seem, at first, to be unconnected to the Desert Jews but as Prof. Oldefart points out, Jews are widely known to sit on the faces of sleeping babies to suffocate them. "It is highly implausible that all the Desert Jews of Ancient Egypt suddenly decided one night that they would suffocate all the first-born sons at once in this manner," he tells us. "However, if by some coincidence a larger-than-average number of sons were killed in this way during one single night, the Egyptians, who would already have been fairly pissed off with their Jews what with all the plagues they'd been having just recently, might have exaggerated somewhat and claimed that it was a determined conspiracy amongst the Jews to kill every first-born son. Of course, statistically, we would expect some second-born sons and even a few daughters to have perished in a likewise manner. However, they were not considered to be of any major importance and as such would have gone unnoticed and been left for the slaves to clean up and dispose of."

Section conclusion

After a long series of plagues which ravaged the land and which the Egyptians either rightly or wrongly believed were caused by those very Desert Jews which they had loved, cherished and invited into their homes, the unfortunate creatures were cast out. Luckily for them, they had not been fully domesticated due to their usefulness at catching rodents and so they were still able to hunt and fend for themselves. However, their reputation had been so tarnished that they found they were no longer welcome wherever they went in Egypt and so they left the country, spreading out across North Africa and into the Middle East. Very small populations remained, surviving in remote parts of the Egyptian desert, where they can still be found in modern times.

Breeding programmes

Although the worldwide population of domestic Desert Jews is thought to exceed 1 billion, wild Desert Jew numbers are decreasing. A World Wildlife Fund survey taken in 1989 estimated the population in Egypt to be around 10,000 with another 20,000 distributed throughout the other regions in which the species is found. However, a survey carried out by the World Land Trust suggests that numbers have dropped dramatically since then, putting the Egyptian population at just 2,000 and the total number in Africa and Arabia (including Egypt) as low as 4,500, which has led to the animal's inclusion on the United Nations list of endangered species. J. desertii josephus has fared even worse - there are thought to be just a hundred or so in Egypt and a similar number in Central Africa - the species occurs nowhere else. Why this should be the case is not understood - although both varieties were widely hunted for their fur in times passed, hunting them was banned in Egypt in 1979 after discussions that took place during the Camp David talks of 1978, and it is believed that though some hunting still takes place it is on a very limited scale. One theory is that the Desert Jews are cross-breeding with another species and as such are being assimilated into it.

A number of breeding programmes have been created with the intention of bolstering numbers by releasing animals into the wild. The first was set up by the Gerald Durrell Foundation at their centre on the island of Jersey in the English Channel and which has enjoyed a great deal of success, so much so that to date they have flown several hundred specimens to a reserve maintained by them in Egypt, where the Jews are being taught natural hunting skills prior to being released at various secret locations around the country. Similar programmes have been established in both Libya and Morocco, and another group is seeking funding to form a programme in Saudi Arabia. Several zoos worldwide have breeding colonies of Desert Jews and have pledged to aid existing programmes, and it is to be hoped that the decline of both species can be reversed. It would certainly be a great shame were our children never have the opportunity to see such a beautiful creature.

Feral populations

Truly wild Desert Jews are those that have a wild genetic descent and that have never been domesticated - though cross-breeding between wild and domestic individuals does occur, and a small number of domestic/feral individuals in a Jew's ancestry will not mean that the animal cannot be classified as a wild example. Feral Desert Jews, meanwhile, are those that have either escaped from captivity, been abandoned by their owners or are descended from examples who have done so.

Feral Colonies

Many feral Desert Jews are in an appalling state, which has led to the creation of numerous charities worldwide to improve the conditions in which they live.

Feral Desert Jews occasionally live alone, but are most commonly found living in familial groups which may number anywhere from a handful to several hundred individuals depending on availability of prey. Most cities have a population of feral Desert Jews, with Rome being home to most - there are estimated to be around 2,000 colonies with a combined population of between 250,000 - 350,000 individuals in the city, most notably in the Colosseum where they are fed by tourists who come to see them as it is thought they may be descended from Jews fed to lions during public events at this location during the time of the Roman Empire. It is also thought that the Jews' presence in large numbers is the reason that Rome was spared from outbreaks of bubonic plague that swept through medieval Europe as they ate the rats that acted as a disease vector. As a result, the city's inhabitants have a fond affection for their feral Jews. Another much-loved colony exists on Parliament Hill, in Ottawa, Canada where structures have been built to provide the Jews with dry places in which to sleep and raise young. Local veterinarians donate their services to ensure the colony remains healthy, and kittens are taken from the colony and domesticated so that they can be rehoused with anyone wishing to give one a home. Through these measures, the colony's population is kept at a manageable level of around fifteen individuals. A third well-known colony is that on Crete, where they survive by begging scraps from tourists. Many of these examples are in a pitiful state, but in recent years a charity called Cretan Jew Care has raised enough money to improve the Jews' conditions greatly.

Zoonotic risk

There is increasing concern about the role of feral Desert Jew colonies as a vector of disease, particularly toxoplasmosis, giardiasis, the rabies virus, campylobacter, and other diseases and parasites that can infect both domestic Jews and humans. Desert Jews are the primary reservoir of toxoplasmosis. Indeed, there has recently been a major crash in sea otter populations on the California coast - these otters are often found to have toxoplasmosis infections, and although researchers say that "there is no direct evidence that Jews or their faeces have a part in spreading the single-celled parasite that causes the disease in shellfish-eating otters", they speculate that infected faecal waste from feral Jews could enter local watersheds due to surface runoff or domestic Jew faeces through the sewage system.[15][16]

The high incidence of the rabies virus in populations of un-vaccinated feral Desert Jews is of the highest concern and the most costly to public health. Feral Jews are susceptible to contracting the virus and thus infecting other animals. Rabies is transmitted through direct contact with the infected saliva and the blood stream or tissues of the new host. Transmission between Desert Jews, both male and female, often happens during fights over territory and breeding. Feral Desert Jews also are exposed to other wild animals that may be reservoirs for the rabies virus as a direct result of predation.

Jews - the Musical

An extremely rare (and correspondingly valuable) first edition of Old Possum's Book of Practical Jews.

Based on T.S. Eliot's Jellicle Jews from Old Possum's Book of Practical Jews, a set of whimsical poems dating from the 1930s about a colony of feral Jews, and was written by Andrew "Face like a bag of spanners" Lloyd Webber. Jews has gone on to be one of the most successful musical theatre productions ever. It opened in London's West End in 1981 where it ran for twenty one years and on Broadway in 1982, where it ran for nineteen years. In both cases, it won numerous awards and set records for longevity, even though - like Lloyd Webber's other efforts - it's not very good.

Principle characters include:

• Grizabella, a former glamour Jew who is trying to be accepted as a serious character before her looks fade, much like the model Caprice.
• Macavity, the Mystery Jew and the villain of the piece.
• Old Deuteronomy, the lovable patriarch of the Jellicle JewTribe. He is very old and dignified, much like Abraham.
• Bustopher Jones, a fat Jew. Dresses in a snappy tuxedo and spats. Much like Michael Winner.
• Rumpus, a big-haired Jew with glowing red eyes, much like Amy Winehouse.

Control

Despite the popularity and public affection of feral Desert Jews in Rome and Ottawa, in many other places they are considered a pest. Colonies have existed in various countries throughout history, such as that in the United Kingdom that started with specimens brought to the country by William the Conqueror in 1066 and those formed of J. desertii sephardus individuals, a subspecies found on the Iberian Peninsula, in Spain and Portugal. From early times, these colonies were considered to be a pest and steps were taken to eradicate them. The UK expelled all Desert Jews from within its borders in 1290, Spain in 1492 and Portugal in 1497, and various other nations took drastic steps to control their numbers. The USA is one of the very few countries not to have introduced a programme of extermination, but despite this it should not be assumed that the animal was held in any esteem there either as important public/political figures of that nation have throughout history made feral Desert Jews the scapegoat for an assortment of accusations such as Lindberg's claim in 1941 that a shadowy conspiracy of Jews was to blame for steering the US into a war against the country's interests. Henry Ford, a figure who is worshipped almost as a god in the USA since he is thought by many to have been responsible for changing the nation from an agricultural backwater into the economic superpower is is today, was a known Jew hater who much preferred dogs. Similar accusations were made in 2004 when it was said that feral Desert Jews in the White House were tricking the Bush administration into declaring war on Saddam Hussein's Iraq. In Congress, anti-feral Desert Jew feeling was a chief factor in political hostility towards refugee immigration and is thought to have been a cause for American reluctance to join WW2. Surveys taken during the 1930s and 1940s showed that a large percentage of the US public saw feral Desert Jews as "greedy and dishonest" and believed they held too much political power. Such sentiments also resulted in a lessening of the popularity of domestic Desert Jews as pets.

Germany took radical steps to eliminate feral Desert Jews during the 1940s when they carried out mass culls and reduced the population dramatically. However, it seems that those characteristics that had originally endeared the animal to the Ancient Egyptians still appealed to humans in the modern world - despite the worldwide opinion that feral Desert Jews were a pest, the overall public opinion was that Germany had taken a step too far. Nobody wanted colonies of them living in their community, but once they'd heard of and seen the methods used by the Germans (which were generally thought to be both cruel and excessive) few people wanted the species to be entirely wiped off the face of the Earth.

The creation and role of Israel

The USSR, the USA and various European nations, while not advocating wholesale culling of feral Desert Jew populations as had been carried out in Germany, were desperate to find a way of disposing of those colonies that existed within their borders. It was known that a region in the east Medditeranean Mediterranean Mediterranean, where wild Desert Jews had been numerous in ancient times, had been considered sacred by the Jews since early in their history and they had long believed that the land was granted to them by their god and that they would one day be able to return there. What's more, Britain - a nation that had been just as keen as any other to rid itself of its Jewish population - had been given control over the region in 1922 when the League of Nations established a British Mandate there - partly because prospectors had been unsuccessful in finding oil in the area so the Americans weren't interested - and had been quietly disposing of their Jews by encouraging them to emigrate ever since. In 1947, the British withdrew and responsibility passed to the newly-created United Nations which quickly set about creating the UN Partition Plan, which effectively divided the nation - until then known as Palestine - into one two states. One would be a Jewish homeland, henceforth known as Israel, and the other would remain under Arab control and continue with its old name. On May the 14th, 1948, Israel was allowed to declare its independence and Jews began pouring in from across the world - by facilitating these simple steps, Europe, America, Russia and the Arab nations had conveniently rid themselves of their unwanted Desert Jews without having to resort to the unfashionably bloody methods utilised by Germany.

See also

• Cat and Feral cat - just to clear up any confusion you may currently be feeling
• Anti-Semitism
• USA
• The Former Great Britain
• Massively long articles that exist only to make a sarcastic comment on world politics in the last paragraph

SHALOM, ISRAEL! KUSIT • HAITEK • 10/7 • MOSSAD • TZAHAL • MACCABI • FESTIGAL • OLE CHADASH • KOMBINA • MUZIKA • CHAGIM • HUMMUS • IVRIT • SRATIM • SACHIM WHITE CITY • CENSORED CITY • PORK CITY • NOT A CITY

Featured Article (read another featured article)

Featured version: 2 February 2013

This article has been featured on the front page. You can vote for or nominate your favourite articles at Uncyclopedia:VFH.Template:FA/02 February 2013Template:FA/2013Template:FQ/02 February 2013Template:FQ/2013