Israel uses veganism to gloss over Palestinian oppression

The illegal Zionist entity, as part of its brutal policies against the sons of the soil has now resorted to another weird plot against the long-oppressed people to deprive them of their birthrights.

Stay with us for an article on ‘MintPress’, titled: “Israel Uses Veganism to Gloss Over Palestinian Oppression”.

The writer is journalist Alan Macleod who has written extensively on US-backed crimes throughout the world, including in Venezuela.

Israel claims to care about animals more than its indigenous human population; one can be vegan, but one cannot support Palestinian rights.

Most of us are now aware that we constantly receive micro-targeted advertisements in our social media feeds based on our interests, location or habits. Those in the vegan community are no exception. However, an increasing number of promoted posts targeted at vegans on apps like Facebook or Twitter are clearly Israeli Defense Force’s propaganda. Most of these are videos discussing, in English, how accommodating to the plant-based lifestyle the Israeli Army is and how easy it is to be a vegan soldier.

Israel claims to be a vegan paradise of tolerance and open-mindedness, where its soldiers can serve according to their ethical principles, eating vegan food and wearing clothes free from leather, wool, or other animal products. There are now around 10,000 vegan soldiers in the Israeli Army and that figure is quickly rising. Meanwhile, Tel Aviv markets itself to foreigners as the “vegan centre of the world”.

But this does not extend to the Palestinian population inside the country, nor to the 5.5 million refugee descendants of those it forced from the land in 1948. In fact, the United Nations describes Israel as imposing an “apartheid regime” on those Palestinians still living inside its border who are forced to use inferior roads, schools, deprived of their homes and denied all manner of basic civil and human rights. So while the Israeli Army’s uniforms may be cruelty-free, the injustice they perpetuate certainly is not. Incidentally, the majority of Israelis are supportive of such discriminatory measures, and around 50% advocate for the immediate and complete ethnic cleansing of the remaining Palestinian population, according to a 2016 poll conducted by the Pew Research Center.

There is a fundamental contradiction between veganism and apartheid. Veganism at its core is an ideology of radical compassion for and non-violence towards all sentient beings. As vegan website Live Kindly explains, it means “to live in a way which shows appreciation to our humanity, our home and those who share it with us.”

Israel, however, continues to use the fact that thousands of its soldiers abscond from animal products as Jews, but it suppressive the Palestinian people. The western Mainstream and corporate media have, unsurprisingly, parroted this assertion. The BBC, for instance, tells the story of an Israeli soldier, Daniella Yoeli, so moral that “had the army not been able to provide conditions that had harmed no living creatures, she might not have enlisted in a combat unit where she would not have been able to provide her own food.” Unexplored in the article was whether or not Palestinian humans qualified as human beings to her.

More alarming, however, is how many vegetarian and vegan outlets have swallowed the bait as well. Veg News reports how Israeli soldiers march to war in leather-free boots and have plentiful plant-based ration options. But especially troubling is that none of the articles even mentioned any criticism of the Israeli Army, the regime, or their actions, effectively amplifying Zionist propaganda worldwide.

Both mainstream and vegan websites have given uncritical coverage to the Israeli Army. With a host of celebrity advocates, including Tobey Maguire, Emily Deschanel and Zac Efron, veganism is growing exponentially across the West. Noting that a quarter of 25-34 year old Americans are vegetarian or stricter, The Economist labeled 2019 the “year of the vegan.” Yet uncritical regurgitation of Zionist press releases subtly presents West Asia-North Africa region where Israel is liberal and forward-thinking compared to what it claims as the backward, close-minded Arab Muslims.

This framing is particularly misleading for a number of reasons. Firstly, much of the most commonly celebrated Israeli vegan food (falafel, hummus, baba ghanoush, stuffed vine leaves) is simply the appropriated cuisine of the local Palestinian peoples that Israel displaced during its illegal creation. Secondly, the great irony is that the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development statistics show that Israelis actually consume the most poultry per capita in the world, with 80% of the population eating it every day. As a whole, Israelis eat over 200 pounds of meat every year, more than even the famously carnivorous Americans.

Furthermore, as the Palestinian Animal League notes, while 3% of Israeli Jews are vegan, the number of their Palestinian Israeli counterparts is twice as high. Therefore, the narrative begins to disintegrate upon even modest inspection.

In a similar fashion, the Zionist regime presents itself as a haven of tolerance in a region of intolerance, and received an award from the European Union, while it is not a member of the EU, but on the same day, it slaughtered at least 58 Palestinians.

Thus, in the Jewish-only state, female bulldozer drivers can destroy Palestinian villages, vegan tank commanders can run over wheelchair-bound children, and transgender pilots can bomb wedding receptions. The trick the Israeli Army is trying to play is to get as much of the world to concentrate on its propaganda and ignore its near-genocidal military policy of genocide against the Palestinians.

AS/SS