Animals and brutal allegory

In the olden days of this blog I wrote against animals as allegories. From today's NYT, an illustration of just how heavy handed animals as allegory can be. Secretly I'd been afraid that Farfur was going to found his own version of Disneyland, so it is easy not to mourn the passing of this antisemitic rodent.

Hamas television, which was criticized for a Mickey Mouse-like character named Farfur who spouted anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish nostrums at children, has replaced the mouse with a bee named Nahoul, who says he is Farfur’s cousin.

Farfur was beaten to death by an Israeli who wanted his land on the previous episode of the children’s show “Tomorrow’s Pioneers.”

Nahoul, the bee, says: “I want to continue on the path of Farfur, the path of ‘Islam is the solution.’ The path of heroism, the path of martyrdom, the path of jihad warriors.”

In the name of Farfur, the bee says, “we shall take revenge on the enemies of Allah, the murderers of the prophets, the murderers of innocent children.”

Talk about killer bees.