Israelis need not fear the arrival of the deadly swine flu that is creating fear and pandemonium around the world.

One Israeli leader has single-handedly assured that swine flu will never come to Israel:

Israel's (ultra-Orthodox) deputy health minister has deemed it unkosher. At least the name.

"We will call it Mexican flu," said Yakov Litzman, the deputy health minister. "We won't call it swine flu."

Pork is considered unclean, and is a constant source of friction in Israel between the Kosher community and those who eat pork.

Thus, apparently, even using the word "swine" to describe a nasty, scary virus that actually originated with pigs, is somehow unkosher...

"In Judaism there is an anti-pig tradition," Israeli journalist Arieh O'Sullivan wrote in 2004. "This is the country where some Orthodox don't let their kids have piggy banks, and where plastic piggies are removed from the bags of farm animals in the toy shops."

Israel strictly regulates pig farming in the country. Most of the pigs raised in Israel are relegated to a pig ghetto in the north where they are raised by Christian Arabs.

But there is one Jewish-run pig farm in southern Israel where the kibbutz uses legal loopholes to raise pigs and sell the meat.

(The kibbutz technically raises pigs for "research" and then sells the "surplus" for slaughter... The kibbutz also reportedly raises the pigs on wooden slats so as not to defy religious edicts against raising pigs in the holy land...)

As journalist Jan McGirk notes over at The Huffington Post, the kibbutz also explored the idea of turning pigs into military mine-detecting machines.

"Mines are the garbage of war," one kibbutznik said. "We are taking this animal to clean up the garbage of war."

Despite the religious revulsion, pork is sold in Israel. And there are plenty of people to eat it.

In 2007, Israeli-Russian tycoon Arcadi Gaydamak created a mini-furor when he bought one of the country's biggest supermarkets (one of the biggest to sell pork) and vowed to transform it into a Kosher chain by banning the sale of pork. (The deal fell through in the end...)

Israel is one of the small number of countries so far to report possible cases of swine flu, er, Mexican flu...