Geva Zin, a veteran of the Israeli army's canine unit, drives up to Kibbutz Lahav in a cloud of dust in a van decorated, well, like a pig, complete with fiberglass ears on the roof and a large snout on the hood.

The 26-year-old, dressed in a T-shirt, jeans, and sandals, steps up grinning and I half expect him to say something like "howdy," as he welcomes me to this kibbutz halfway to Beersheba.

"Like your pig van," I say.

His grin disappears.

"It's supposed to be a dog," he says. "You just wait until I get the eyes attached and it'll look more like a dog. I like dogs."

But pigs are on our mind. I've come down to Kibbutz Lahav to have a firsthand look at a group of pigs Geva Zin has trained that have become the focus of world attention. They have even, if you can believe it, won the endorsement of top West Bank rabbis.

"This here is Haziza [Fireworks]. She was the first one I started working with," Zin says as he passes her and leads out a second, smaller shaggy brown pig from the sty.

"This is Soda," he says, scratching her back like a dog and working a leash around her chubby neck.

Working under the auspices of the Israel Institute for Animal Studies that's based on the kibbutz, Zin has been perfecting yet another great Israeli development.

Yes, from the land that gave the world drip irrigation, Uzi sub-machine guns, and the Epilady electrical hand-held leg-hair removing device... come bomb-sniffing pigs.

Zin chose the miniature Sinclair variety of swine since they were considered smart and are also more portable than huge hogs.

"You don't want a quarter-ton pig walking on a mine field do you?" he says with the seriousness of someone who has actually considered the idea.

"The pigs' advantage for clearing mines is their natural desire to root. The mines are usually underground. Dogs have to be forced to root, but it comes naturally to pigs. For Haziza, she's thinking she is doing something she likes and I pay her for it," Zin says.

"Look at their snouts. This animal was made for this mission. God made the pigs to find things underground. What we have done is take something God gave and use it for man's needs," Zin says.

There is something ironic about a secular Jew speaking of God while referring to a furry brown pig called Soda.

In Judaism there is an anti-pig tradition. 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 toyshops.

According to Jewish law, the pig is no more treif (non-kosher) than a shrimp or a rabbit. But in Jewish awareness, swine draw particular revulsion. The religiously observant have for ages fought to keep pigs out of the Holy Land. There were even laws passed against raising pigs in Israel, something that was never passed against horses, dogs, or camels, which are also treif.

But Kibbutz Lahav, from the staunchly secular Hashomer Hatzair movement, found a loophole in the law. Dr. Dan Ratner, an expert in pig breeding and a geneticist, helped found the Israel Institute for Animal Studies.

"There was a law passed in 1963 banning pig farming in Israel. All the kibbutzim stopped raising pigs. But the law allowed pigs to be raised for research purposes. Any surplus pigs were allowed to be slaughtered," Ratner says.

Surplus?

"Oh we have thousands of surplus pigs every season," he says with a wink, adding that the slaughterhouse is one of the most economically stable kibbutz endeavors.

"But we do indeed conduct medical research. None of that cosmetic testing stuff, mind you. But real research," Ratner says.

He declined to let me have a look at the pigpens to verify the age-old rumor that pigs are kept on wooden slats in order to get around the law that they cannot be raised on the Holy Land.

He says he never really paid attention to pigs' behavior until the energetic Zin showed up nine months ago with his idea to train pigs to find explosives.

"The pig was always seen as a pork chop, as food," Zin says. "But the aim is not to eat the pig, but to use their talents to clear mines.

"Mines are the garbage of war. We are taking this animal to clean up the garbage of war," Zin says.

This is a job that comes naturally to pigs. Besides, there are jobs that even dogs won't do.

"Dogs... prefer to sniff out people and cars and be in a social setting. They don't like to dig up the earth," Zin says.

After completing his military service training dogs in the elite Oketz unit, Zin traveled to Croatia, where he worked privately to locate mine fields with the help of dogs. When he was there he noticed wild boars roaming the area. While pigs excel at finding truffles, he had something else in mind.

"I watched how they behaved and came to the conclusion that they could be more efficient than dogs at sniffing out mines and explosives. I noticed that they constantly sniffed at the ground, their snouts always hovering above the earth. I got the impression that their sense of smell is incredibly well-developed.

"The pigs work and understand very quickly, maybe half of the time of the dogs," Zin says.

So far he has trained four pigs, all female. Calling Soda, he leads her to a "minefield" and starts talking to her in Hebrew. She seems to understand.

"Good. You're so pretty," Zin says. Soda grunts and wiggles her wet nose, opening her mouth for treats.

When they detect a mine or explosives, his pigs quickly sit and point their snouts skyward and wait for their tasty reward, which Zin slips into their mouths.

He says the pigs work particularly well next to railroads, pipelines, or garbage dumps, where there are many other metals that confuse the reading on electronic devices. Right now, they need a trainer next to them, but he hopes to train them so that they can ultimately work on their own.

Eventually, Zin and the rest of the staff at the institute hope to use the pigs in former war zones like Angola, Croatia, and Mozambique to clear mines.

"The idea is to either market these pigs abroad with trainers or to set up a school here where people will come and train on our pigs and then return with them to their countries," Zin says.

Reports of Zin's success have rippled across the hills to Judea and Samaria, where Jewish settlers say they want to use them to stop would-be Palestinian attackers from gaining "martyrdom." The rabbis have already been asked to give their blessing.

Yekutiel Ben-Ya'akov, the director of the Gdud Haivri (Jewish Legion), an organization that supplies guard dogs to settlements in the West Bank, says he believes the trained pigs will be able to help them sniff out terrorists before they attack.

"We want to save Jewish lives in Israel and that includes exploring the possibility of using pigs to detect bombs and explosives. Pigs have superior sniffers to dogs," says Ben-Ya'akov.

Ben-Ya'akov adds that dogs have very limited stamina and can only work for about 90 minutes before they need a rest.

"The dogs are useless without a break, whereas the pigs can work non-stop," Ben-Ya'akov says. "We are extremely serious about launching the first test. The primary obstacle has already been overcome. We received backing from rabbis."

According to Ben-Ya'akov, former chief rabbi Mordehai Eliyahu and Kiryat Arba's Chief Rabbi Dov Lior have already given their endorsement.

Rabbi Daniel Shilo, chairman of the rabbinical committee of Judea and Samaria settlements, says that while the raising of pigs has traditionally been forbidden, the move should be approved in exceptional circumstances.

"Because we are dealing with... the saving of lives, it is permissible to have the animal," Shilo was quoted in Ma'ariv.

Ben-Ya'akov says that the rabbis were also considering the question of purchasing pigs and thereby supporting the pork economy in Israel. And they ruled that this was not their business.

"The question remains, would a kibbutz like Lahav supply the pigs to the settlers?" he says. "Lahav has made it very clear that they would only use the pigs for humanitarian purposes outside of Israel, in places like Angola. But this could be because they don't want to get involved in a legal issue over their license or perhaps they don't want to be seen as helping the settlements."

Moshe Tayar, managing director of Kibbutz Lahav, bypasses the question. He confirms that settlers have visited the pig-training program but have not yet made any formal requests for the pigs.

"We are for anything that saves lives," Tayar says. "But at the moment we are still in the research stage."

This hasn't deterred Ben-Ya'akov, who says they would raise the pigs themselves if need be. They have already proven their determination by setting up their own guard dog center and training operators. They have succeeded in foiling four suicide bombers, Ben-Ya'akov says.

"There are a number of settlements which said they would absorb the project. It won't be simple. A lot of people are calling and are upset, and we lost a chunk of support from the religious community which just doesn't understand the issue," Ben-Ya'akov laments.

He is convinced that the pigs would also serve as a strong deterrent factor to terrorists, since a terrorist who touches a pig, according to Muslim law, is not eligible for the 70 virgins in heaven.

"I know the guard pig is an exotic idea, but we have already implemented other exotic ideas. This past month we placed a gaggle of geese on the community of Adei Ad to act as guards since they start honking when strangers approach."

Even Ben-Ya'akov considers his idea odd, but definitely feasible.

"We live in a horrible reality and it is unfortunate that we have to resort to such mishugas (craziness)," he says. "The use of animals at all for defense joins other ideas such as bypass roads, bulletproof buses, the big security fence, and bullet-proof vests. All of these are sad and the truth is this is a sad reality. We don't know where the next bomb will go off. People don't know if they will come home at night. There are hundreds of parents who send their kids off in the morning never knowing if they will see their kid that night," he says.

Ben-Ya'akov says he envisions using sniffer pigs to pick out bomb-toting terrorists at busy intersections and roadblocks and bus stations, but also for extended duty around settlements.

"We often get alerts four or five times a day. The pig could be brought to the area to search and stay on duty for much longer than dogs," Ben-Ya'akov says. "If the pigs are good enough to use in Angola, then why not here?"

Back on the kibbutz, Tayar says that the IDF has shown interest, but prefers to see the pigs in action abroad first.