Animal Attack: Netanyahu's Dog Bites Likud Member, Eagle Attacks Trump, Obama's Dog....

NEW DELHI: This weekend, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pet dog was put behind bars after biting a lawmaker and a cabinet minister's husband during an event to mark the Hanukkah Jewish holiday.

"Last night we lit the fifth Hanukkah candle with all the family present before we were sadly obliged to send Kaiya to quarantine as required by law," Netanyahu wrote in a Facebook post.

The mixed-breed Kaiya nipped lawmaker Sharren Haskel from the prime minister's Likud party as well as the husband of Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely during a candle lighting ceremony to mark the holiday.

Finding a political and animal-rights angle to the incident, Netanyahu added that the experience brought home to him "flaws incompatible with logic and compassion" in Israel's public health regulations, that mandates dogs who bite -- even if they have received all the necessary inoculations -- be confined for 10 days.

The incident, unsurprisingly led to chatter regarding what the dog actually thinks of the Israeli government….

A few days before this incident, a video turned into a gif went viral as it showed US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump being attacked by a bald eagle.



Comments on the video were along the lines of: “This is what America’s symbol of freedom thinks of Trump,”

Animals and politicians share a -- let’s say violently close -- relationship.

And Donald Trump is not the only Republican presidential candidate to have irked a non-human. Animal lover and former Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich was bitten by a penguin at the St. Louis zoo in August 2012. Gingrich was apparently unharmed but definitely not insulated from the political jokes. A certain Andrew Lieffring, a Facebook commenter on the story quipped, “The liberal bias of penguins is well documented. They are always wearing tuxedos like hollywood elites.”

President Obama’s dog Sunny made it to media headlines when she knocked over a two-year old guest at the White House in December 2013.

In Wisconsin, a groundhog bit Mayor Jon Freund.



An Australian politician, Shane Rattenbury, was attacked by a kangaroo while on a morning jog in the national capital Canberra in 2013. "I'm not sure who got the bigger shock, me or the kangaroo," he told the ABC. "He was minding his own business eating some grass, I was minding my own business running. "Unfortunately the kangaroo jumped up, as they do when they're a bit startled, and took a defensive pose and unfortunately I came out of it second best with some decent cuts down the back of my leg."

We couldn’t find any stories of Indian politicians being attacked by animals, but we do know that animals are a very political creature in India… as evinced by the controversy over the cow, as well comments such as one where PM Modi compared the lives lost during the 2002 Gujarat riots to killing a puppy. "Even If I am in the back seat of a car and a puppy (kutte ka bachcha) comes under the wheels, isn't it painful? It is. Whether I am a chief minister or not, I am a human being - I will be sad if something bad happens anywhere,” PM Modi had said.

Let’s just say we prefer the real animal nips and attacks as opposed to the analogical use of political animals!