Israel is a Violent Apartheid State, but does it also Embrace Veganism?

(Notes on Israel & Veganism, Part 1)

I was proud to join last week’s anti-Netanyahu rally that both called out Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his war crimes, and demanded an end to the nearly $4 billion a year that the United States gives to the Israeli military. Tens of thousands of Israeli protesters have challenged Netanyahu’s actions in recent months too, but their efforts fail to include the plight of Palestinians. According to Palestinian political analyst, Dr. Yara Hawari, the protests in Israel are not about “saving democracy”, but rather saving a system of privilege for one group only, Jewish Israelis. The Israeli protests ignore Palestinians, and are mostly about “reconfiguring the status quo.” Luckily for anyone who loves peace and justice, there are excellent organizations in the US, like Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), that help inform the public, and raise awareness of the ongoing crimes that are committed by Netanyahu, and the state of Israel.
Click here for the Jewish Voice for Peace website (the largest progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization in the world).
Click here to learn more from Dr. Yara Hawari.
Click here for the Palestinian Policy Network.

“What struck me as I began to study history was how nationalist fervor–inculcated from childhood on by pledges of allegiance, national anthems, flags waving and rhetoric blowing–permeated the educational systems of all countries, including our own. I wonder now how the foreign policies of the United States would look if we wiped out the national boundaries of the world, at least in our minds, and thought of all children everywhere as our own. Then we could never drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, or napalm on Vietnam, or wage war anywhere, because wars, especially in our time, are always wars against children, indeed our children.”
– Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States

Did you know that so far in 2023, Israeli military and settler attacks have killed 219 Palestinians, including 45 children? And that since 2000, the US backed Israeli military, which extends to Israeli settlement expansion, has now murdered 2,287 Palestinian kids? Two-Thousand-Two-Hundred-Eighty-Seven. Most Americans yawn, but can you imagine if these 2,287 Palestinian kids were rich, white, and American? You know, worthy victims? Forget about it. Howard Zinn once said that wars are always wars against children, and if all children are our children, what are we doing? The US sends, without taxpayer consent, close to $4 billion every single year to the merciless Israeli military. The US has blood on its hands for ever more. According to the United Nations, 6,407 Palestinians have been killed in the last 15 years in the context of Israeli attacks & occupation, with over 152,000 Palestinians reportedly injured (308, and 6,305 respectively for Israel). Despite being condemned by the United Nations, Amnesty International, and countless other humanitarian organizations, Israel continues to lie, brutalize, and murder Palestinian children (and Palestinians of all ages), at alarming rates. According to Maren Mantovani, “Israeli settler colonialism and apartheid is based on the extermination of the indigenous population and the elimination of their hope of living freely. Palestinian children represent that hope.”
Click here for Maren Mantovani’s piece, Targeting Palestinian Children is Necessary for Israeli Settler Colonialism.
Click here to learn more about Israel’s War on Kids.
Click here to learn more from the United Nations.
Click here to learn how Israel has turned all of Palestine into ‘an open-air prison’ to further annexation plans.

“Biden is lagging behind his own base on this issue. Democrats are rapidly moving to the left and calling for the U.S. to stop supporting Israel’s human rights abuses against Palestinians. Hand wringing and small diplomatic snubs are not enough. It’s long past time for Biden to end U.S. complicity in Israeli apartheid.” – Beth Miller, Jewish Voice for Peace Action

Beth Miller is an inspiring activist and speaker, but I don’t understand why so many people continue to give President Joe Biden a pass. Biden is a war criminal too. In addition to being complicit in Israel’s crimes against humanity, he was also one of the architects of the illegal US invasion and occupation of Iraq (and other US led wars) which killed millions of innocent people. A warmonger, Biden has also nixed peace negotiations with Russia on multiple occasions, which has so far, resulted in over 535 Ukrainian children being killed, and more than a thousand injured (and yes, the US repeatedly provoked Russia into war). Biden is also a shill for corporations, including weapon manufacturers, as he continues the practice of demonizing China (which has brought the entire world even closer to nuclear annihilation).
Click here to learn more from JVP Action.
Click here to learn more from the UN about the children killed in Ukraine.

Okay, so Israel is a Jewish Supremacist state that commits crimes against humanity on a near daily basis. Despite Israel’s monstrous actions, there have been many paradoxical reports in recent years of Israel also being a compassionate and vegan friendly country. According to Chef’s Pencil, Israel ranks 3rd on the list of 2020’s most popular countries for vegans. As per Nicole Axworthy, “The data shows the plant-based protein market (Israel’s) grew by 18.5 percent from 2019 to 2020, while the animal food market grew by only 1.8 percent. The largest growth was in the plant-based burgers and minced or ground meat categories, with an overall growth of 57 percent, followed by plant-based schnitzel and sausages.”
Click here to learn more from VegNews on the growth of Veganism in Israel.
Click here to learn more about how Israel became the first country in the world to ban the sale of fur for fashion.
Click here to learn more about Israel being the 3rd most popular country for Vegans.
Click here to learn more about the 5% of Israelis who claim to be Vegan.

Is this true, could Israel be the 3rd most popular country for vegans? If so, talk about cognitive dissonance. The goal for all vegans should be to live according to compassion, not Veganism. Despite the possible trending towards a more vegan friendly society, the desire of “compassion for all” seems to be lost on many Israelis, especially the younger generation as they appear to be even more conservative than their parents. According to author Colleen Patrick Goudreau, “For me, being vegan is not the end; it’s the means to the end, and that end is unconditional compassion and optimal wellness. ⁠
Put another way: I don’t aspire to be as vegan as I can be; I aspire to be as compassionate as I can be.
⁠The goal is to live in such a way that doesn’t intentionally cause harm.
The goal is to live according to compassion. The goal is not to live according to veganism.
That would imply that there are rules and doctrines to live by, and to me, that misses the point of what being vegan is all about.
⁠⁠I don’t avoid meat, dairy, eggs (and leather, wool, and other animal products) because they’re NOT VEGAN. I avoid them because they’re NOT COMPASSIONATE. ⁠
By virtue of the fact that animal products cause harm, I don’t buy them. In other words, VEGAN isn’t my barometer — COMPASSION is. Non-violence is. Non-harm is. Kindness is. ⁠
Compassion is the goal. Veganism is the way to get there.”⁠
Click here to learn more from Colleen Patrick-Goudreau.
Click here to learn more about why the majority of younger Israelis are conservative.
Click here to learn about a poll that found 73 percent of Jewish Israelis between ages 18 and 24 identifying as right-wing.

I read that Adolf Hitler may have been at one time mostly vegetarian, even though he reportedly loved ham, squab (pigeon, I had to look it up), and other animal products. Apparently, his propaganda people marketed him as a vegetarian because it suggested both self-discipline, and abstention from all forms of indulgence. Could it be possible too, that on some level, the Nazi propagandists were aware of their horrendous crimes, and just wanted to balance things out a little for the sake of appearance? It is not a crazy thought, and it reminds me of a study that was done that showed how some women lie about being vegan, in order to impress men who they are interested in romantically. I am not an expert, but it is certainly possible that the state of Israel promotes the idea of being vegan and compassionate towards animals, in order to compensate for the daily atrocities it commits against Palestinians. Hmm.
Click here to learn more about Adolf Hitler being marketed as a vegetarian.
Click here to learn more about a study that showed how some women lie about eating less meat in order to attract men.

If compassion is the goal, shouldn’t all vegans be outraged by Israel’s (and the US’s), ongoing crimes against humanity? Professor and author Norman Finkelstein is the son of Holocaust survivors, and he has called Israel a “lunatic state”, and Gaza, “the largest concentration camp in the world.” Knowing what I know about the Israeli government (all governments lie), and the US corporate media, I tried to confirm the notion of Israel being compassionate towards animals, as well as one of the most vegan friendly countries in the world (pigs, it turns out, seem to be the lucky ones in Israel, as Judaism and Islam have prohibited eating pork and its products for thousands of years). I checked in with the good folks at Faunalytics and discovered that per capita, no country in the world kills more chickens than Israel. So much for Israel being uniquely vegan friendly! Each year, over 60 chickens are slaughtered per inhabitant in Israel, which represents the highest slaughter rate of chickens in the world (Belarus comes in 2nd at over 47 per inhabitant). Israel also kills .0521 cows, and .0493 sheep per person each year as well. According to Faunalytics’ Content Director Karol Orzechowski, “With numbers adjusted to reflect a relationship to population, countries like China, Brazil, and the United States drop out of the picture. New Zealand dominates cow slaughter (each year almost one cow is slaughtered per inhabitant). Israel, Belarus, and Guyana lead in the per capita slaughter of chickens. Denmark slaughters the most pigs per capita (almost 3 pigs per year per person in the country), followed by Spain and the Netherlands.”
Click here to learn more from Faunalytics.

This fits in with a theory that I continue to explore regarding the proportional relationship between the number of innocent people a country kills, and the number of innocent animals it kills as well. The United States is the most egregious violator of animal and human rights (see the homepage of this website), but Israel doesn’t appear to be too far behind. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said, “Violence begets violence.”

Clearly, Israel is not as “vegan friendly” as many media reports suggest. It is great that there are more businesses and options for Israeli vegans (and that they are the first country to ban the sale of fur for fashion), but how are they singularly compassionate if they continue to ignore Israel’s ongoing terror campaigns and slaughter of Palestinians? Evidently, the basic tenet of Veganism, “compassion for all”, isn’t even on most Israelis’ radars, especially among the younger generation (as mentioned earlier, even the anti-Netanyahu Israeli protesters (5% of whom may be vegan) are choosing to erase Palestinians). And if this is the case, why would any vegan with a conscience want to visit Israel and support the continued US backed massacre of Palestinians? I will likely never visit Israel again.

Until next time…

*Update: Click here for an excellent presentation on Israel’s vegan-washing from the always inspiring, Dr. Leila Dehghan.

*Main image: Beth Miller, JVP Action