The Letters
PAPER CHASE
Sheets of newly printed ballots at Palphot printing house in Karnei Shomron, in preparation for Israel’s upcoming general election
Snails are not for sale
l The Hebrew University has no intention of marketing a nonkosher delicacy, the snail, either in Israel or abroad, even if the university is successful in breeding a commercially viable species on the Golan Heights. This was the reassuring news given to Israel’s Chief Rabbinate, which has objected to the snail-breeding experiments being carried out by a university researcher, Dr Yossef Heller. Benny Mushkin, a university spokesman, said that the institution had no intention of going into the snail business at all. “If the experiments are successful, we’ll sell the know-how to a commercial company. Even if we were to experiment with a better strain of tomato, we wouldn’t start growing tomatoes.”
Chemists’ condom boom
l Condom sales are booming in Israel as a result of the Aids scare which has belatedly reached the country. An informal survey of Tel Aviv chemists shows an increase in sales of condoms of between 20 and 100 per cent — an increase which the chemists themselves attribute to the attention which the newspapers, and more recently television, have been paying to the disease. The leading importer of condoms, Promedico Ltd, says that its sales have risen by over 50 per cent in the last year. According to one Tel Aviv chemist, Joseph Shor, more women are buying condoms than ever before. However, the survey suggested that the increased sex education has not been effective. Most of the chemists reported that the under-20s — who seldom bought condoms — had not been persuaded to do so by the new campaign
Crocodile tears
l Israeli farmers have bred a species of crocodile which actually does cry. Farmers on settlements around the Sea of Galilee have discovered that their new breed of snapper has unusually large ducts around the eyes which, when irritated, secrete a fluid substance, giving the impression that they are weeping genuine tears. The new crocodile has been baptised (if that is the word) Dimotinus tanimius, the Latinised form of the Hebrew for “crocodile tears.”