Back in April, I told the story of the Gaza zoos from hell.

Exotic animals are illegally smuggled through tunnels from Egypt, and then put on display, starved, mutilated and neglected according to the whims of the owners and staff. Gaza is not starving. It’s full of mansions, shopping centers and luxury hotels where rooms can run to $600 a night. Zoo animals in Gaza aren’t being deprived of food by Israel.

Four Paws may be part of the problem in a new twist on a familiar Gaza scam. Animals are smuggled in from Egypt to stock ‘zoos’ that have no relationship to an actual zoo. The animals are starved, abused, and allowed to die. The deaths of the animals are used to fuel anti-Israel propaganda. Animal rights groups then monetize the outrage, as Four Paws did, by loudly broadcasting the suffering of the animals, and then fundraising off it. The animals are finally bought by Four Paws from the zoo owner at an undisclosed, but likely high price.

And so the zoos of Gaza will continue popping up, especially if there are lucrative buyouts waiting. All you need is some start-up capital to smuggle in a few lions, then abuse them, and wait until the animal rights groups show up with their checkbooks.

And I predicted that the zoo scam wasn’t going anywhere.

Four Paws claimed to have bought out the Rafah Zoo, but now the scam is back.

A zoo in the Gaza Strip that sparked international outrage for declawing lions and its atrocious facilities has reopened just months after it closed.  

The Rafah Zoo in the southern Gaza Strip was well known for its emaciated animals, with the owners saying they struggled to find enough money to feed them.

In April, international animal rights charity Four Paws took all the animals to sanctuaries, receiving a pledge the zoo would close forever.

But last month it reopened with two lions and three new cubs, penned in cages only a few dozen square feet in size.

Critics say the owners want to bully Four Paws or other animal welfare organisations into giving them thousands of dollars to free the animals into their care.

Of course they did.

They can smuggle in animals, cash in on the show, then cash in on the animal rights groups, rinse and repeat.

As I wrote back in the spring, it’s a smaller version of the same scam thhe “Palestinian” terror groups pull with people, but done with animals.