To the Israeli PM’s appeal to adopt man’s best friend, we say Shalom

Dogs have not had a very good run with Indian politicians of late. And most will probably steer clear of making any canine allusions for some time. So, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s earnest entreaty to his compatriots to adopt older, abandoned dogs from rescue shelters — citing his own new canine companion as an example — was a refreshing change. And the mixed-breed dog has obviously rapidly assimilated her new owner’s famously combative style by demonstrating a talent for incisive bites — though not quite the way politicians usually do. She’s a dog after all.

Luckily, the recipients of her snappy ripostes were members of the Israeli prime minister’s own Likud party rather than the opposition. Or, worse still, US secretary of state John Kerry, who has also met her.

The media would have made a dog’s dinner out of the resultant pandemonium. Insinuations would probably have been made that she was secretly following her owner’s orders — as former Delhi minister Somnath Bharti’s golden Labrador has been accused of doing. No amount of dogged denials would have convinced them that they were barking up the wrong tree. But Indians currently exercised over dogs in the political sphere should take a cue from the Israeli incident in which the victims dismissed the transgressions as trivial.