Animal "Holocaust" op-ed in Israel's Haaretz newspaperE
An Animal Rights Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM

Karen Dawn, DawnWatch
September 2012

As I clicked through email today and saw the headline "Stop the Animal Holocaust" I assumed it was on an animal rights blog. I did quite the double-take when I realized I was reading a headline from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Haaretz is published in Hebrew and English, in Israel and internationally, in print and on the web.

Here's the sentence right under the headline:

How are enlightened people capable of ignoring the gap that exists between the amount of suffering caused to animals when they are being murdered, and the amount of pleasure such an enlightened person gets from eating their flesh.

Eyal Megged was inspired to write the piece when a lecture scheduled at his son's school, to be delivered by vegan activist Gary Yourofsky, was forbidden by the Education Ministry because according to that ministry "the material that is conveyed is not suitable."

Megged writes:

However, from the point of view of an extreme vegetarian like me, the prohibition imposed on Yourovsky about describing, at my son's school and other schools to which he was invited, the horrors that we perpetrate on the helpless animals is no less grave than a situation in which Holocaust survivors would be prevented from describing what they underwent in the death camps.

The whole piece is well worth reading and can be found on line.

I was surprised to find this piece in any mainstream media but particularly so in a paper read by the people most likely to be sensitive to Holocaust comparisons. Publishing it was a bold move for which Haaretz should be commended. Please comment below the piece and send an appreciative letter to the editor at [email protected] . Always include your full name, address and phone number when sending a letter to the editor.

On a separate note...

I was honored this week to learn that the hot new Aussie-based but internationally focused website, vegansarecool.com , honored me and DawnWatch with one of their "Vegan of the Year" awards for "Outstanding Media Innovator." I thanked them but told them I felt undeserving -- those of you who have received DawnWatch for years know that I have been able to devote significantly less time to it than in years past. Yet it was heartening to learn that what I am able to do is appreciated, and I wrote to them that the award is inspiring me to do more. I noted the irony, given that the purpose of DawnWatch is to inspire major media to give more coverage to animal issues, our tactic being the expression of appreciation for whatever little they do. You can learn more about the awards and about "Vegans are Cool."

Yours and the animals',
Karen Dawn


DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at DawnWatch. You may forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts only if you do so unedited -- leave DawnWatch in the title and include this parenthesized tag line.


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