Right wing Israeli vegans are a major challenge to the Israel-haters ~ EoZ

Friday, March 4, 2022

Right wing Israeli vegans are a major challenge to the Israel-haters

Here are parts of an abstract of an academic paper, "Vegan nationalism?: the Israeli animal rights movement in times of counter-terrorism," published in Settler Colonial Studies.

In recent years, the movement advocating animal rights and welfare (animal rights movement), in parallel with the practice of ethical veganism, has become increasingly significant in Israel. Along with this trend, several studies examine and analyze the colonial aspects of the Israeli animal rights movement and its relevance to the Palestinian issue from the perspective of Critical Animal Studies. Critically examining preceding studies on veganism and colonialism, through analysis of the political discourses of leading activists and public figures within the newly popular Israeli vegan trend, as well as interviews with a sample of Israeli vegans, this article will demonstrate how veganism in Israel is associated with a narrative of Israeli national superiority. Such discourses may well be called ‘vegan nationalism'. Vegan nationalism is a discursive and regulatory framework in which veganism is considered proof of the moral superiority of a nation in a settler colonialist context, implicitly stressing the barbarism and backwardness of the ‘terrorists’.

The paper has way too many logical fallacies to list, but here is one particularly egregious example:

In her writings, Israeli animal rights activist, Shira Hertzanu, has highlighted the seemingly paradoxical fact that, in recent years, the animal rights movement in Israel (widely assumed to be leftist) has made great strides and gained more popularity even as Israeli society, itself, has grown increasingly rightist. Interviews I conducted mirror many of Gilboa’s statements, asserting vegans in contemporary Israeli society are not limited to leftists, but encompass the entire political spectrum, including those who identify as politically right or right-wing. As Hannah, one of my interviewees, expressed it, ‘animal rights is [sic] not something political, okay? Basically, it’s not something political. ..'

According to Esther Alloun, decoupling and denying any association with political issues such as Palestinian injustice ‘is also practised by activists from the Zionist Left who tend to be liberal and progressive on a range of issues except Palestine. As such, this reveals the culture of silencing based on the ongoing practices of denial and indifference, that sustain the single optic underpinning the AR movement.’ The intersectional leftist solidarity movement’s decoupling of animal rights from any polarizing, controversial issues (especially the Palestinian issue) not only frames the animal rights movement as non-political or political-free, but also contributes to the emergence of right-wing vegans and animal rights activists, such as Tal Gilboa and Yair Netanyahu, who view animal rights issues as evidence of Israel’s national supremacy in the context of the ongoing ‘war on terror’.

The author clearly is upset - vegans are supposed to be leftist and care about other intersectional issues. The very existence of right-wing vegans challenges that view and is therefore suspect: they don't care about animals, they just want to "vegan-wash" their racism.

While on the one hand the author is upset that Israeli vegans are often not active animal rights activists at the same time, on the other s/he is upset that right wingers can be vegans altogether, and assumes that their goal is to prove that Israel is more ethical than its Arab neighbors who want to see it annihilated. Instead of being happy that fewer animals are being killed, the author wants veganism to be political - as long as it is left-wing.

Life is so much easier when you can divide people up into good and bad based on their choice of foods.

The paper is filled with such contradictions.

What is particularly striking is the statements above make repeated, specific references in which ‘terrorists’ are equated with animals, lower and less than, not worthy of the respect and legitimacy afforded human beings. Even former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has, in recent years, spoken of his compassion for animals and appointed Tal Gilboa as his animal rights advisor, expressed sentiments similar to those detailed above responding, as follows, to the November 2014 Jerusalem synagogue attack, ‘The human animals who perpetrated this slaughter were full of hatred and incitement, deep hatred and terrible incitement against the Jewish people and its state.’ Shira Hertzanu explained the rhetoric of such statements saying, ‘in order to justify their claimed superiority, Israeli nationalists aim to lower Palestinians to an animal level,’ categorizing them as subhuman, thereby abrogating the need to accord them even the most basic treatment and consideration under the framework of (human) rights.

Calling terrorists "animals" might be offensive to animal rights activists because the term is meant to be demeaning. But the author is saying that Netanyahu called all Palestinians "terrorists" and therefore justifies treating them as less than human - which is not at all what he said or believes.

Could it be that veganism has become more popular for other reasons and Zionist vegans are simply...vegans? Nope.

Some might attribute the recent, very significant increase in the right-wing presence in the veganism movement to the fact that as veganism transitioned from a small movement, populated primarily by a relatively tiny group of like-minded left-wing individuals, to a huge full-fledged national movement enjoying an immense following. The surge in the number of participants was accompanied by an increase in the sociopolitical diversity of those participants resulting in the quite noticeable growth in the number of right-wing vegans. Such an explanation, however, is far too facile and fails to consider the significance of how animal friendliness in Israel discursively works in favor of the nationalist framework of moral supremacy

This is just more proof that if you look hard enough for something, you can find it.

(h/t Daled Amos)