(Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

By Aaron Pomerantz and Yuval Weiss

Last Updated 1/4/2016 at 11:30 AM

Ramat Aviv: Israel’s Animal Rights Community is up in arms  over credible reports that a chimpanzee housed at Tel Aviv University’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine took its own life early today after a marathon session in which it was forced to read the newspaper Haaretz every day for three weeks straight. The chimp, known as “Dudi” was found in his cage at dawn, unresponsive, and attempts to revive him with coffee and a nice cinnamon pastry failed. The Daily Freier was on the scene as various Animal Rights Activists chained themselves to the Medical School’s gate.

“This is unacceptable and it has to stop. NOW.” exhorted an impassioned Tamir W. “To force a defenseless creature to read Haaretz cover to cover for three weeks. I mean, I don’t even do that, and I’m Lefty as hell.” Tamir continued. “If they had just let Dudi read the Weekend edition, maybe skip the editorial page during the week, that would have been OK.  But to overdose him like this…….it’s just not right. No human could take this punishment. Well, no human outside of Sheinkin.”

Even some members of the Medical School’s student body left class early to stand in solidarity with the protesters.  A tearful Smadar K. recalled her experiences with Dudi. “As part of my internship, I used to bring Dudi his snacks every day. When I first met him, he was so happy.  But as he got further and further into the Haaretz experiment, he became plagued with self-doubt. It’s like he started to…..he started to blame himself for everything. Like when I showed up 2 hours late one day, he used sign language to apologize to me……but I was the one who was late. What the hell?”

University officials were unapologetic today, with Spokesperson Tamar C. speaking to assembled media. “Whatever. This is science.  Anyway, next week the orangutans will start going online to read +972.”