Israel’s ‘crocodile lady,’ Idit Silman—who is trying to facilitate the scheme of National Security Minister Ben-Gvir for a moat filled with crocodiles to surround Palestinian prisoners—has run into opposition. Silman, who was key to Ben-Gvir’s accession to the cabinet in 2022, was rewarded then with the post of Environmental Protection Minister. Last month, she reclassified crocodiles from “wild animal” to a “cultivated wild animal”—so that they could be deployed in Ben-Gvir’s prison plan.
Now, 35 of Israel’s senior academics in zoology, ecology, and biology noted that Silman’s stand contradicts the professional opinions of experts within her own ministry and called upon her to reverse her crocodile ruling. In a society going increasingly berserk, they added: “We feel a deep sense of shock at the horrifying notion that wild animals would be used as a tool for intimidation in the State of Israel in the year 2026. The question of who those prisoners are is irrelevant. The question is who we are, what we want to be, and how we want to be perceived by ourselves and the world.”
Silman’s previous claim to fame was in 2022, when in the Knesset, she resigned from the governing coalition of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, bringing it down. Bennett claimed that Silman had been “persecuted for months” by supporters of Benjamin Netanyahu “at the most horrific level” until she “broke” and left the coalition. Silman denied allegations that she resigned based on a deal with Netanyahu to be appointed the Minister of Health. (She claimed that she brought down the government because the Health Minister had allowed visitors to enter hospitals with regular bread during Passover.) Her action allowed Netanyahu to come to power again, with his deal with Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, and Silman got a cabinet post.
After the Oct 7, 2023 attack, when she attempted to visit survivors of the attacks, she was chased out of the hospital, both by relatives of the injured and staff of the hospital. They angrily shouted at her, holding her and her government responsible for the political climate that led to the attacks, accusing them of having “ruined” the country of Israel. Then, in March 2025, she stated that the “only solution for the Gaza Strip is to empty it of Gazans.” Now, she may have to pursue her goal minus the crocodiles.
