Companion Animal Care Articles from All-Creatures.org

Animals Lebanon: Why I Donated to Them Today

From Kim Stallwood
October 2024

Watching online videos of people rescuing animals encourages me to think that if we only learnt how to help animals more we could be encouraged to harm people less.

I’m particularly exercised when human-made political ideologies and religious beliefs cause suffering to animals. I admit to caring more about animals than people. Animals are innocent. We’re the guilty ones.

Men even more anger me, as it all too often is, who are armed with guns, liquored up on politics and religion. They believe they have a licence to harm, abuse, exploit, and kill those who they see not as them but as others. When it comes to animals, we generally don’t give a damn. We’re indifferent to their suffering. We’re complicit in their murder. We’re hardly kind to each other.

No one will be surprised to learn that I’m not a fan of people. Most likely, you are like me. But, as I always try to remind myself, we can’t hate what we want to change. We need people to open up their hearts and minds to animals. Hatred won’t achieve that.

There’s not much I can do to help the animals in the Middle East caught up in the rotten net of delusional religious beliefs and self-important political ideologies. Or animals anywhere in the world, for that matter. Other than to keep doing what I’ve been doing for most of my life—speaking up for the animals.

And, when I can, donate to organisations like Animals Lebanon.

I’m overwhelmed by feelings of hopelessness about what’s happening in the Middle East. About what’s happening to the environment across the world. Watching online videos of people rescuing animals encourages me to think that if we only learnt how to help animals more we could be encouraged to harm people less.

Posted on All-Creatures.org: October 7, 2024
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