Jerusalem Dog Stoning: About 2,160,000 results

There is an article that was published, and then refuted as a hoax¹, in Israeli newspapers, then picked up by the BBC² and spread around the world. This article refers to a dog that was supposedly sentenced to death via stoning by a Haredi ("ultra-Orthodox") rabbinical court. The contents of the article are so ridiculous that if this even were based on a true story, the published version is completely embellished to the point where it would be unrecognizable, but the major news websites all over the world have reprinted the worst possible version of the story without question.

At first I thought it was funny how outlandish this story was and that anyone would print this garbage. Then, suddenly, the story was everywhere. BBC, Yahoo, TIME, Gawker, are you kidding me people? Search Google for "dog Jerusalem stoning" and you get over two million results. The talkbacks are 99% anti-Semitic comments, along the lines of, "And they wonder why people hate Jews," or "I used to think Jews were smart, now I'm not so sure" (nice!), or "You'd think Jews would know better after the way they were treated by the Nazis, but, whoops, guess not."

For arguments sake, let's accept the premise that this ridiculous story has some grain of truth to it. Let's say that there was a dog that refused to leave the courthouse and that in the room, there was someone who said, "Hey, maybe this dog is the gilgul³ of that lawyer who cursed this court out 20 years ago." Let's even (for the sake of the story) assume that the retraction is false and that the dog was not safely picked up by an animal shelter, but that there may have been some violence involved. Under the assumption that this much is true, let's take a look at the rest of the story, point by point:

1) The idea that a rabbinical court even has the authority to order a dog to be put to death by stoning nowadays is preposterous. Yes, according to Jewish law, if an animal kills a person, then the animal is sentenced to death. But A) No bet din (rabbinical court) nowadays has that kind of authority⁴, B) This dog committed no crime, was not charged with any crime, was not found guilty of any crime, and therefore could not have been sentenced to any punishment, and C) Even if a crazy, fringe group wanted to pull this kind of stunt--this is a court that is tied to the government and would never have been able to pull it off. I'm not sure whether the preceding is actually true, but in any case they would never have been able to pull it off.

2) "One of the judges at the court in the city's ultra-Orthodox Mea Shearim neighbourhood had reportedly asked local children to carry out the sentence." Really? Really? What, the appointed court executioner was on a cigarette break?

3) "Dogs are often considered impure animals in traditional Judaism." Yeah! We're not allowed to eat them! Stop the presses, everyone: DOGS AREN'T KOSHER! Ha ha ha, those nutty Jews.

4) The BBC article even links to the English ynet article here. The original article contains the only quote (i.e. evidence) in the entire story, from an unnamed court manager:

"It was ordered by the rabbis because of the grief he had caused the court. They didn't issue an official ruling, but ordered the children outside to throw stones at him in order to drive him away. They didn't think of it as cruelty to animals, but as an appropriate way to 'get back at' the spirit which entered the poor dog."

Aha! So you're saying that a bet din did not, in fact, sentence a dog to death by stoning and then order children to carry out the sentence, but rather, someone asked a few children to scare him away? That's so funny, because the BBC article completely cuts off this quote and changes it to this:

A court manager told Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot the stoning had been ordered as "as an appropriate way to 'get back at' the spirit which entered the poor dog", according to ynet.

Wow! If I had read only the BBC article, I would have assumed that the court literally condemned the dog to death by stoning! Ha ha! Silly me!

Now, there is a prevalent fear of dogs in Haredi society (possibly a holdover from the dogs owned by Eastern European Christians back in the day), which is a problem. So I believe that Haredi children might throw stones at a dog to scare it away, despite the fact that this behavior is unacceptable. However, "Dog chased out of courthouse by kids throwing stones" is not, I repeat not, international news.

The ynet article was bad enough. Israeli society hates Haredim, and I know that there are reasons to be critical of Haredi society. But instead of doing it normally, they make up reasons to demonize them, assume the worst when any story is reported on them, etc. But then! The outside world gets ahold of this story, and instead of saying, "Oh, those wacky Haredim," they say, "Oh, those evil Jews" and "Oh, that horrible religion." I'm angry with ynet for sloppy reporting, I'm angry with international news agencies for jumping on this non-story and embellishing it to make it look even worse⁵, and I'm angry with the world for believing this crap so easily.



External sources:
<sub>1. http://lifeinisrael.blogspot.com/2011/06/maariv-apologizes-about-misleading.html
Translation of the Ma'ariv clarification:
Clarification
On June 3, 2011 we published a report headlined "Mea She'arim: Rabbinical court ordered the stoning of a dog." In the report, it reported on a complaint to the police filed by the SPCA to the police against a rabbinical court for financial matters in Jerusalem. In the report, a sweeping denial was brought by the head of the court, Yehoshua Levin, to this complaint. The rabbi said, among other things: "There is no basis for animal cruelty in Jewish law or in logic." According to him, workers from the municipal center picked the dog up from the court. The headline of the article did not cover the entirety of the story and we apologize for the distress caused to the court and its members.
2. I'm not sure if BBC was the first to pick it up, but their article is the most popular one and the first one I saw, so I'm using it as the main example.
3. A gilgul is sort of like a recycling of the soul, similar to reincarnation in a way. This is a kabbalistic concept and is obviously very complicated, and I don't pretend to be an expert.
4. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/BetDin.html
5. Seriosuly, check this one out: http://www.albawaba.com/dogs-do-not-get-fair-hearing-judaism-israeli-rabbis-sentence-dog-death-stoning-379058</sub>