Welcome to the Vegan Report, my name is Ryan and today we are discussing a deep division
plaguing the vegan movement.
Way back then I remember how Israel was looked at very favorably by vegans.
One media outlet called it the Global Center of Veganism.
Online I remember the many popular videos of Gary Yorovsky being interviewed on Israeli
TV, always with Hebrew subtitles.
But since October of last year, since the brutal attacks and kidnappings perpetrated
by Hamas and then the violent retaliation of Israel, something shifted in the vegan movement.
And I witnessed internal conflict, not about how effective activism should be done, think
about welfarism vs. abolitionism, but about the Gaza war.
And when I witnessed Jewish vegan activists leaving the community in drove, erasing even
their social media presence, I knew that this represented the breaking point for the cause.
To discuss this topic, I have with me 4 brilliant Jewish vegan activists.
Donnie Moss, who is behind the popular Animal Rights Online News magazine, Der Turn, Mira
Jacer, founder of the Jewish Animal Rights Organization Tikva for Animals, Bobby Soot,
a distinguished filmmaker and photographer who has collaborated with notable figures
such as Sean Mosin, Generation Vegan and musician Moby, and Shani Cohen, successful vegan entrepreneur
behind Shani Seasoning and Urban Leaf Catering.
I like to always ask the question, who is your vegan hero and why?
I feel like it always allows to reveal who you are in the space of veganism, what your
perspective is.
So, who would like to start?
Yes, Mira.
Hi, I'm Mira Geiser.
I would say my vegan hero is not a specific person necessarily, it's more just kind of
the mindset that certain people have and just wanting to be as effective as possible and
then not, you know, if they don't see the results that they'd like to see, they're willing
to kind of shift their perspective and try new things and not necessarily be stuck in
their ego of what they're more experienced in maybe if they're not seeing the results
they want, but I would want to give a shout out to my mom who despite being very empathetic
and really feeling what animals go through, she's gone to some awful places with me to
get footage and it would not have been possible without her driving me there.
So yeah, I'm just really thankful for that.
Thank you, Mira.
What about you, Donnie?
So in 2004, I stumbled upon a veg fest in my neighborhood and left with a DVD, Meet
Your Meat, and that was the start of my, that was a documentary film that shows, takes
viewers behind the scenes of factory farms and slaughterhouses, and that was the start
of my vegan journey and my journey as an animal rights activist.
And I've loved PETA ever since.
I would say my vegan hero is Jane Vales Mitchell, the former CNN anchor who is now a full time
animal rights sort of campaigner, vegan campaigner with who created the vegan app Unshane TV.
Thank you, Donnie.
Shani?
Hi, I'm Shani Cohen.
I live in Vancouver, Canada, and I went vegan in 2013 after watching and it's funny that
you mentioned that Gary Yorovsky famous speech, I am a Gary Yorovsky vegan and ever since
then I truly have been looking up to him.
His unapologetic stance of like on veganism is something that always moves me through
all these years in activism and in life.
And so yeah, I truly appreciate him.
He's the one that gave me that push to open my eyes and and join the movement.
So.
Thank you, Shani and the fellow Canadian.
Hi, Bobby.
Hi, I'm Bobby.
I'm in Austin, Texas.
I'm an animal rights photojournalist.
I guess my vegan hero would be my twin brother who after attempting suicide went to rehab
and went vegan day one and says that that's what really saved his life was adopting a
vegan lifestyle and he's the one who convinced me to become vegan.
So he's definitely my hero.
Thank you, Bobby.
Okay, so let me start with this question.
In the introduction, I talked about Jewish vegans, Jewish vegan activists leaving the
movement.
Is that factual?
Did that really happen?
Who wants to take that?
Yes, Donnie.
So just today, I received an email from a woman who I've never met before who said,
I'm going to read it.
Hi, Donnie.
I've been an animal advocate and vegan for years.
I pulled back from many vegan and animal rights animal activist groups after 10, 7.
I thank you for your posts and have requested your friendship.
I've gotten probably 20 emails like that since 10, 7.
But I could also tell you that as an organizer in New York City, the number of vegan Jewish
animal rights activists who participate in events has dropped precipitously.
We've lost organizers.
We've lost people who just show up and participate.
And so, yeah, the loss has been pretty profound and sad.
Mira.
So it's interesting.
I might have a different perspective than a lot of other vegan Jews, not necessarily
everybody, but I started noticing a problem in 2020 during COVID.
More people were home in quarantine, so they were online and they were posting more about
their thoughts.
And that's when I started seeing things blaming Jews for COVID, which was very reminiscent
of Jews being blamed for the Black Plague.
And it just, I think I started speaking out around then.
I know I was interviewed for an article when James asked me to start talking about the
animal holocaust and that was beginning of 2021 and the person was just reaching out
to people who had been posting, Jews who had been posting.
So I definitely started seeing an issue then, but I think at that point it was certain pockets
of the vegan community or the animal rights movement.
So if you weren't in those specific spaces, you didn't necessarily see it, but just over
time I saw it get more obvious and also kind of spread throughout the community where it
wasn't just like sporadic random scenarios.
And I got to a point where the space I was in, I did not feel safe being in and also,
especially when you're doing activism that's more high risk where you're working with
other people and you need to make sure that you trust each other, especially safety that
you have on another's backs.
It just wasn't possible knowing what they thought about Jews and what they were saying
about Jews.
And again, this is way before 2023.
And so it got to a point where I was kind of at a crossroads where I didn't want to stop
advocating for animals, but I didn't really know where to go.
There are certain approaches to help animals that I find I'm more effective with and maybe
come more naturally and I just didn't see any of those spaces being welcoming to me.
And so it got to a point where I thought maybe I would create my own thing, but I didn't
feel knowledgeable enough and experienced enough.
But I did notice there was a gap in the Jewish community in Israel as a country in terms of
maybe things that, like approaches that weren't being filled.
And certain, there was a lot of like vegan food advocacy and stuff like that, but there
was less so maybe systematic stuff, abolitionist stuff.
So I thought maybe I could fill in that gap.
And just over time I saw more and more vegan Jews basically say like, I see it now and
I'm willing to join you because I feel like there's no other option.
And there were people, especially after October 7th, 2023 that I thought would never leave
the spaces they were in that are not only leaving those spaces, but some of them are
completely done and honestly so traumatized, they're not lending their expertise or experience
to the community at all.
And again, these are people that have been instrumental for a variety of things in the
activist community that I never would have seen coming.
I think that there is a disproportionate, in a positive way, amount of Jews across the
globe that are involved in the activist community considering how small of a percentage we are
population wise.
I think it's like 0.2 or 0.2% of the world population and we're involved in all facets
of the activist community, whether that's lawyers helping out an activist or animal rights cases,
rescuers, investigators, organizers, protesters.
And yeah, just seeing very few Jews actively involved in the larger community compared to
where I was in 2020.
Bobby?
Yeah, I guess it depends on what we mean by leaving the movement.
I organized the vigils in LA for six years and I did a lot of street activism and I'm
not going to be doing street activism anymore.
I was starting to clash with approaches to activism and effective communication that
I was seeing on the streets and then after October 7th was kind of just the push that
I needed to be like, I'm not going to be doing this anymore.
However, I can't say that I've left the movement.
I'm still an animal rights photojournalist.
My photos are going to be on exhibit at Tel Aviv University in May.
They're in an art magazine in Japan.
It was just published.
So I'm still doing that.
I'm just not out on the street so you won't see me active.
You might say he left, but I haven't left.
I'm just changing my approach.
Shani?
I can only, like I don't know about Jews in general, but I can speak for myself and my
Jewish friends in the community here in Vancouver and I definitely can tell that we are choosing
not to participate in events outreach because of, we just feel ostracized and just that feeling
of being unwelcome in the movement just has caused us to kind of like do our own thing
within ourselves, which is just weakens the movement altogether because our power is in
numbers when we do outreach, when we do protests and to alienate that part of, and like Mary
said, Jews are essential in any human rights fight that we had over the years.
If it's the fight, BLM is part of it, animal rights movement, all of this stuff.
And so we just don't feel welcome anymore.
And so then choosing not to participate and yeah, definitely it's something that has
been happening since October 7 and the explosion of anti-Semitism in the movement.
Well I guess naturally my second question is what caused that departure from the movement?
And Mira, you alluded to that.
Now Shani, you've named it explicitly.
So why?
Why are Jewish activists not feeling safe, not feeling welcome?
What's happening?
Donnie?
Well, I mean it really started right after October 7th when you would know, you know,
after that massacre where 1200 people, 1200 people in Israel were literally burned in their
homes, raped, murdered, kidnapped.
I mean in additional 250 kidnapped.
The typical expressions of support that were accustomed to seeing, we just, the victims
of that, of those atrocities weren't afforded, those words of compassion and sympathy and
it was just, and what is that?
Why is that?
But it became, sort of, it got dark very quickly.
Long before Israel even responded militarily, you know, the, instead of reaching out to
Jewish people in the community, people started to post that this was an act of resistance
that this was justified, that they were, this was exaggerated, that Israel did this to itself.
I mean, the mental gymnastics employed to not just say what it was, a horrific terrorist
attack against innocent civilians, including children and families and kids dancing at a
festival, it became, sort of, odious, hateful right away.
And then shortly thereafter, the accusations of genocide and colonialism and apartheid and
ethno-state, I mean, these were activists with whom I've been working in the streets
for, in some cases, 20 years, not once in my career, well, I should go out of career
because I'm a volunteer, but not once in my life as an animal rights activist, did any
of these people even talk about Israel or Zionism?
The fact that I was Jewish was irrelevant, and then all of a sudden, people's identities,
they sort of transformed their identities into anti-Zionists.
Where did that come from?
And many of them sort of secretly admitted that they didn't know anything about the issue
or the region.
They were just jumping on this bandwagon, and it was just anti-Semitism.
One of the things that struck me, and then I'll turn it over to somebody else, was that
not long after Israel began to defend itself and tried to get the hostages back, three
animal rights organizations who had never commented on geopolitical issues and were really focused
on animal rights made inflammatory posts falsely accusing Israel of genocide.
And thousands upon thousands of animal rights activists in the movement who've maybe never
given the Middle East conflict any thought, who didn't know anything about the region,
were then seeing that these groups that they supported and were members of and respected
were accusing Israel of genocide, which is not what happened at all.
And so I think that that really pushed things forward in terms of alienating Jews from the
movement.
I started to say earlier that I'm an organizer in New York City.
I used to get, I could easily get 40 or 50 people to come out to a protest.
Now I not only have Jewish activists who aren't coming out anymore in many cases, but I also
have activists who don't come out because I'm Jewish.
And so this is really hurting, this is really hurting not just Jewish activists, but the
animals for whom we all should be fighting.
And to make matters even more worse or complicated is that many of the people who are alienating
us and attacking us aren't really even active in the movement.
So they're sabotaging, they've almost co-opted the movement to and are sabotaging it at the
expensive animals.
Yeah, I think that there's a few factors involved with what happened.
And I think that if we're honest with ourselves, we can admit how much intolerance is in the
vegan animal rights community.
I mean, vegan activists and animal rights activists are intolerant.
I can't tell you how many times I've heard them say, well, I'm not going home to my parents.
They're monsters.
They're not vegan.
They have this binary view of the world after becoming vegan that you're vegan, you're good,
and if you're not, you're bad.
And so if you're not, then you're not welcome.
And you combine that with this new approach to fact checking, which is just how I feel
about something is enough.
And you combine that with the fact that we don't put one and one together anymore to
get two on our own.
And we turn and look to the crowd and the crowd is the loudest voice.
I think that those had a lot to do with what happened.
It was weird because it was surprising and not as surprising as I would expect at the
same time because I have found animal rights groups to be incredibly angry and intolerant.
And it's like, well, par for the course, I guess.
But what was difficult was with groups that I'd worked with for 10 years, organizations,
on October 8th, I put up a post on my Instagram page saying I stand with Israel and all of
them called me and told me to take it down.
And I was like, well, hang on a second because we as an organization, we stood up for George
Floyd.
We stood up for Ukraine.
We stood up for the shootings at gay bars in Orlando.
We stood up for all these things.
But now because it's a Jewish problem, we're just going to say, well, it's too complicated.
We're going to stay away from this one.
Well, at the same time, using words like genocide and their posts on their websites.
So I think that the problem is that people have, because of things like cancel culture,
have become scared with saying what's right versus what's popular because most of people's
lives exist on social media and that life can be taken away so easily with someone just
saying, we need to cancel this person.
So I think what happens in the animal rights movement in terms of views of things can often
be microcosm of the larger world.
And the surge of antisemitism was not just in the vegan community.
It's been an issue worldwide.
In some places, the statistics of antisemitic events has been as high as it has been basically
since the Holocaust, depending on the location, or as early as it started to be tracked basically
by certain organizations.
And I think, you know, then you're bound to get, you know, some of those people that are
in the vegan community to have those opinions as well.
But I will say, I've basically never seen any accountability in the animal rights community
for xenophobia towards Israelis and just antisemitism towards the Jews in the community.
I will say there was one instance where someone, again, this was way before October 7th, 2023,
when one person had made a blatantly stereotyped nonfactual comment about Jews.
And I had called this statement now, and then their friend had talked to them and they reached
out to me.
But in terms of organizations, especially after October 7th, having any accountability
for the organizers or people involved, I have seen none.
And if anything, these people are continuing to be platformed more and more.
And I'm talking about people that are blatantly supporting the kidnapping of people, people
that are trying to justify why it's okay to take hostages, why Hamas was doing something
good, why Hezbollah was doing something good.
I mean, some of these people have, I don't know, close to 100,000 followers in the community
and then they're sharing that stuff and they're not getting any repercussions for that.
And then there's me and my friends, none of us who have a significant amount of followers
trying to say anything.
And it's really just not getting anywhere.
And kind of like what Bobby said, that people just have the choice of either being in a
very hostile environment where not even everyone wants to work with us, but then they end up
just resigning from positions they're in.
And yeah, I mean, it got to a point where I was trying to keep track of different statements
made and I've just run out of storage on my phone from all the screenshots of things being
said.
And it's basically most major organizations in the community I've seen have said awful
stuff or knew about awful stuff and we're trying to justify it and just ignore it.
And that's where I find it to be very problematic because like what hope of recourse is there
if everyone's either going to ignore it or tolerate it.
This is very interesting because something I found sinister about this all is how, like
you said, there was no media coverage, nobody is talking about it.
There's this huge shift in the vegan movement, the vegan community, and it just goes unnoticed
except for a few influencers here and there raising their voice against those positions
and against anti-Semitism.
I waited, like who is going to cover this story?
Why is nobody talking about it?
So I don't know if you have an answer for that, but yes, Shani.
Sorry, I was muted.
I just wanted to answer to your previous question.
Why don't we feel safe?
And I agree with what everyone were talking about, I really felt it because I've lived
everything that you guys just said.
And for me, it was even more personal when in the first, I think, week or two after the
October 7 attacks, the Vancouver vegan community has really rallied up and started to make
lists of businesses that were put in on some sort of like a black list of do not support
these genocidal Zionist businesses.
And I was among them and to reiterate what Mary said, like these are accounts with thousands
and hundreds of thousands of followers sometimes.
And the impact of that was just unimaginable.
Like it's to be put on a list kind of like throws you back to really dark times in our
history.
And that's alongside with all the posts and DMs that people have been sending me.
So I just to reiterate what everyone said.
So yeah, just personally, my business was alienated was put on a list not to support
in the local community.
So that was the main event that made me feel unsafe in this community in particular and
the vast community in general.
And to your question why nobody's talking about it, I can't tell.
It feels like you say there's the cancel culture that we're all been marinating in for years,
not only in this subject, but in other subjects as well.
And I don't know, it feels like there's like the vegan community as a whole is part of
this like more general and larger human human rights movement and progressive movement.
So naturally, these people took the stance of supporting Hamas and absolutely ignoring
the suffering of the Jewish people and especially after the massacre in Israel.
And it just became just like the people before me said they jumped on the bandwagon.
Nobody, it doesn't feel like anyone has truly critical nuance conversation about what is
happening in Israel using slogans like genocide, apartheid, ethno-state.
It's just, it's fashion.
It feels like just fashion.
He really stops to talk about this and all the complicity around it in a, yeah, in a
matter that will give space to everyone because there are legitimate grievances to the Palestinian
population who lives in and outside of Israel in Gaza and Judea and Samaria.
There is a legitimate criticism that we can put on the Israeli government.
We're not saying we're angel.
We also have our own grievances towards our government.
But from this to where we are and where days after, like Bobby said, we were massacred,
there's a big, big gap that I don't know how to bridge that gap, how to make it make
sense.
Donnie.
I think we should clarify that a lot of the people who have been attacking us are disguising
their anti-Semitism behind anti-Zionism.
What we know, or I mean, I can only speak to them for myself, that when someone calls
me a Zio or a Zionist, that's really a stand-in for Jew because an estimated 95% of Jewish
people believe that Israel has a right to exist.
I mean, Zionism is a right for Jewish self-determination in our ancestral homeland.
If that word has somehow been transformed or bastardized, now it means racism and colonialism.
It doesn't mean any of these things that are being attached to it now.
My belief is that the vast majority of people who are anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism because
you're basically stating that Jews don't have a right to live in their ancestral homeland,
which they've inhabited for 3,000 years except for certain expulsions, and that Israel is
actually the most successful decolonization project in the history of the world.
To somehow suggest that Jewish people who are indigenous to the region or Jews who have
fled persecution, pogroms, post-war Europe, and have gone there to suggesting that we
don't have a right to be there, and those indigenous Jews who have been there for generations
are never right to be there.
It's just anti-Semitism.
Masked as something else.
Mubbi?
Yeah, I totally agree with Donnie.
I think that Israel is the new Jew when it comes to anti-Semitism.
They just say that they're attacking Israel instead, but we all know what that means.
I think what made this feel different, I grew up in the 80s in Texas as a Jew.
I've seen anti-Semitism since I was a kid.
What made this different is for the first time, anti-Semitism was trending.
It became the new thing to do.
You have people like Kanye with a Super Bowl commercial.
It's for his website, which is just a shirt with a giant swastika on it, HH1.
Nobody's calling that out.
Nobody's saying anything about that while at the same time calling Jews Nazis for defending
their homeland and defending their people.
It's gotten to where as long as you have freedom of speech and people will listen, it's okay
for you to say something as long as you are either a victim or championing victimhood.
The victim is just who social media decides that the victim is.
It's usually just the smaller group.
This is dangerous because these are easy answers.
These are easy.
This correlates to something that I saw a lot in Animal Rights Movement that was making
me want to step out in the first place was we use easy, lazy activism.
We use shaming and ridicule as a way of saying that we're holding someone to account.
It has nothing of you to shame and ridicule someone.
I don't need to know anything about Donnie to start ridiculing him right now.
Nothing.
The difficult part is having understanding and being able to create open discourse, validating
people's experiences because none of us were born vegan.
We don't want to do that.
We just want the easy answer.
We want the easy enemy.
I think that that moved into anti-Semitism.
I think anti-Semitism was already there.
Mira.
I forgot who had said it.
Just that people aren't really thinking necessarily about what they're saying.
They're jumping on the bandwagon.
I think in the case of anti-Semitism, it's definitely true in the movement.
In the larger world, people just have a fundamental misunderstanding or lack of understanding as
to what anti-Semitism is and how it functions.
People assume it's like every other bigotry, but instead of seeing Jews as less than it's
often what they call punching up, where the evil puppeteers over seeing and controlling
things.
It's almost like a copy and paste template throughout the years, whatever is cherished
in society, were the ones that are messing that up.
If social justice is what's deemed very important in this time period, Jews are the ones getting
in the way of that.
When capitalism was important, Jews were the communists.
When communism was important in certain regions, Jews were the capitalists.
I also don't understand how the Soviet Union played a role in literally the rhetoric we're
talking about now.
My grandmother would go undercover into the Soviet Union to help try to free Jewish political
prisoners.
She would take photos of what she was seeing in the area just to remember her trips.
I was looking at one of her photo albums and there was propaganda at a bookstore.
I read it and I was like, this is literally what we're seeing now.
It was like, I don't, the gist of it, because I don't remember the details, was basically
it was depicting Israel as a not as Hitler actually, like controlling and grabbing.
I think it was the US.
Then at the bottom it says Zionism is nobzyism.
That's literally what we're seeing.
People just don't understand what they're saying is not only not a new original concept,
it's literally very old.
Those that understand how anti-Semitism was looked in the past are like, yeah, this makes
sense, but people aren't really taking the time to look at that.
To them, it's how could it possibly be anti-Semitism?
It doesn't look the same as other forms of discrimination, I guess.
Shani?
To continue what Merah was saying, I look at anti-Semitism as kind of like a virus.
It's funny that after COVID people can now understand this analogy of a virus being mutated
and changing.
It moved from hatred that is based on religion based with the Christianity and moved on to
science, what we saw with the Nazism of the race differences, etc.
In today's world, when the religion is social justice and liberation and everything that
this movement is standing for, anti-Zionism in air court, just like Bobby said, is anti-Semitism.
It's just another trope, it's just another version of anti-Semitism and these people
just cannot see it.
It's just important to understand that it's just like a virus who gets mutated.
It's just a form of Jew-hatred through the centuries, through different times in our
history.
This is just another version of it.
They think they're so original and so revolutionary, but it's just another form of Jew-hatred.
Bobby?
I have a question that I want to pose to everybody.
That is, I don't understand how and when it became socially acceptable to be anti-Semitic,
but it is.
All the proof you need is you look at college campuses in the US.
If there were protests stopping African Americans or LGBTQ groups from getting into class and
terrorizing them, those would have been shut down immediately.
But because it was Jews that weren't being able to get to class, it was considered a
freedom of speech or PC, which is just fascism disguised as political correctness.
My question is, does anyone have an answer for why it became okay to be anti-Semitic
when it's still not okay to be racist, it's not okay to be homophobic, it's not okay to
be transphobic, but anti-Semitic is fine.
Donnie?
I mean, I could try to answer that question.
At the beginning of this post-10, 7 world, someone framed it to me like a lot of people
were jumping on the bandwagon with all of this anti-Semitic rhetoric under the guise
of oppressor versus oppressed.
And there was this perception that Jewish people are white, despite the fact that I
believe that a white Jews are in the minority in Israel.
I don't know what the exact numbers are, but there are plenty of Israelis who are people
of color from Ethiopia and other parts of the Middle East and Africa.
And so I think that they latched onto this sort of oppressor versus oppressed narrative
and that gave people a free pass to behave and to use such anti-Semitic language.
I mean, we think in social justice movements, people criticize microaggressions.
Not only are microaggressions against Jews not being addressed, full-blown attacks against
us are now perfectly acceptable.
And I just want to read, this is just one post made by a former DXE spokesperson.
And DXE is an organization that I loved and supported financially and made video.
I mean, I was really on board and for them to not put a stop to stuff like this.
So I'm going to read it.
And this is again, a former DXE spokesperson on social media, potentially thousands of
people or tens of thousands of people saw this.
All Zionists are infiltrators when they operate within any other cause or movement.
They would rather nuke the entire organization than allow it to take a stand against the
genocidal ethno-state.
Their ultimate solidarity is with white supremacy and fascism.
But the Western left has allowed them to embed themselves within our ranks because we have
been brow-beaten into submission by claims of anti-Semitism made by those same infiltrators
to silence us when we attempt to build intersectional multinational coalitions.
This is especially sinister in the animal rights movement.
A movement long ago, a long co-opted by Zionists to humane wash their sinister and virulent
ideology.
Zionists cannot be animal rights activists.
All Zionists are infiltrators within the animal rights movement and their influence
is a ticking time bomb.
Their solidarity with your cause or organization is entirely contingent to your submission
to their theocratic genocide, ethnic cleansing of the Middle East, and black hole drain on
the American economy.
All Zionist influence in progressive movements must be rooted out and destroyed by any means
necessary.
All Zionists are inherently infiltrators because their ultimate goal is the acceptance
of Israel within progressivism.
And they will never accept that the best tactic for progressive causes is to abandon Israel
before we associate too closely with genocide.
Their contributions regardless are made to obfuscate the reality that they are in fact
murderously Islamophobic and they use your deeply held beliefs to mask their bloodlust.
Zionists dress up and mock progressive activists by even appearing at rallies and other events.
This actually goes on.
But just replace the word Zionist with Jew, which is exactly what this person meant and
which is exactly what 95% of Jews are.
And this was, you know, people like this and share it and comment it and thank her for
posting this.
Where do you go from here as Jews in a movement?
So I've been living in Israel the last couple of years and it has been difficult in the
sense that not all the sanctuaries there have bomb shelters and let alone for the animals,
like it's just not possible like financially to build like a very small bomb shelter is
like tens of thousands of dollars or dollars or shakals.
I don't remember which currency it was, but just to create a small enough shelter to be
able to continue to have staff and volunteers come and make sure the sanctuary is functioning
for the residents.
And I remember wanting to fundraise for some of them, especially when there were like way
more rockets happening up north in Israel and there's a sanctuary up there that, you
know, the person running it just had to lay down in a field and pray that the rocket wasn't
going to hit her.
And I remember thinking I need to fundraise, but who in the community can I actually share
this fundraiser with because like no one's going to want to share it, which is in fact
very true.
I mean, sanctuaries themselves and sanctuary founders have said disgusting things themselves.
So it's not like I could share it with fellows, sanctuaries necessarily.
And it was just this moment where I know it's been brought before the animals are suffering
because of that.
And like I just had no idea who I could share the fundraiser with.
And ended up being I just shared it in the Jewish community and non-vegans were donating.
And that's kind of the situation where it's been and activists, you know, for example,
in the U.S. where I've done animal activism, just have no idea what it's like, you know,
trying to help animals when you're worried about rockets and like just, you know, I don't
know, trying to document animal cruelty at a dairy farm and like driving up north where
there's way more concentration of rockets at that point and being like, you know, praying
on the highway that you won't need to get out, lie on the side of the highway and cover
your head and pray a rocket doesn't hit you because like there's no wild Michelle at your
nearby, but you got to do to help the animals.
And then there's, you know, people in the U.S. kind of saying like, I hope the rocket
hits you.
Like it just, it's not, yeah, it goes back to the question.
Like I don't really know how you could reconcile this when even the animals that need the help
so that volunteers continue to come and, you know, make sure their spaces are clean and
that they're getting the exercise they need are not enough for these people to put whatever
ideas they have aside and be like, okay, let's make that happen.
I just, it's a very good question.
I don't know, but it was very eye opening.
Bobby.
Yeah.
I'll actually just let you go ahead and move on to the next question.
I just wanted to add not surprised at all that that comment came from DXE.
Not surprised at all.
Well, I'm wondering now about DXE.
What's the story behind that?
Yes, Mira.
I will just say, just for the purpose of me talking about seeing anti-Semitism during
COVID, they were the first ones that were on my radar.
And ultimately why I decided to try to start my own thing for Jews, just because even back
during COVID, it started to seem like things were ramping up and kind of just being acceptable.
But yeah, I think at this point, it's clearly not just them.
You know, like we've said, other organizations have put out statements and it's not just
attendees, you know, it's organizers and it's kind of widespread now.
So yeah.
Yes, Donnie.
I want to make an observation about, Mira was talking about being in Israel that there's
I think a lot of misunderstanding about the history of Israel and what Israel is Israel.
In the United Nations, there are 48 Muslim majority countries and 23 of them have Islam
declared as the quote, state religion.
Israel is the only country that identifies as Jewish.
There's no official state religion, though.
That's not Jews live in peace with Arabs in Israel.
There are two million Israeli citizens are Arab and there are Christians and many others
in Israel.
Yet, there's this accusation that Israel is somehow an apartheid state.
Despite the fact that in all of these surrounding countries, Jews have been persecuted, chased
out and and and when they fled.
So there's such a miss, you know, how Jew Howard, how is Israel a colonial state?
There's one country.
But these wouldn't these these other religions or ethnicities that have conquered countries
around the world be colonists?
Why is this one Jewish state being accused of colonization?
It doesn't make any sense.
It's the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people.
There's just Israel's the size of New Jersey.
It's a tiny state and it's racially diverse, ethnically diverse.
But it's the center of the world's fury and that double standard to me is just more proof
that all of this hate stems from antisemitism.
As Shani referred to in the past, you know, Jews used to be persecuted because we were
Jewish.
Now we're being persecuted because we have a state.
They're always just looking for a reason.
It's a shape shifting virus looking for a reason to hate Jews.
And now they're hiding behind the fact that Jews have a homeland, a state, but it's tiny.
It's the size of New Jersey.
And it seems like people won't and including many animal rights activists won't sit still
until it's wiped off the face of the earth from the river to the sea in a global anti
Fada, a violent uprising against Jews.
Yeah, I just thought I find it really interesting that, you know, because much of the animal
rights and vegan community is on the left in terms of political views and they're progressive.
Israel stands against everything they hate.
Israel is the only place in the Middle East where you can be openly gay, openly trans.
It's the only place that has freedom of speech where you can you can protest against the
government.
All of these things that they that these groups say that they hold like that they stand up
for Israel is the only only country in the Middle East that actually stands up for these
things.
And this just shows like how unwilling these people are to actually do any research to
actually do it to be educated in any way on what they're fighting against.
Or it shows the depth of hatred against Jews.
They're willing to throw Israel under the bus, despite the fact that it represents all
of these progressive principles.
And just to add to that, Bobby, I mean, Israel is, you know, many people describe it as the
vegan capital of the world.
You know, my friends who live in Israel just say that the whole country has been sort of
veganized and maybe, you know, maybe Myro or Shani can speak to that more.
But to then sit then accuse us of of vegan washing or humane washing.
I mean, it's all it gets spun around.
But it's true at Israel is a is a is a center of animal rights advocacy and veganism and
all of these other progressive principles.
Yet people in our community are are siding with those who want to do away with all of
these principles just doesn't make any sense.
Santicemitism.
Yeah, I actually produced a vegan travel show.
And an episode we episode one was in Israel.
And the vegan community there was, you know, this was seven years ago was incredible.
And what I found was incredible was how accommodating even the IDF, the military is for vegans
in terms of like giving them vegan gear and vegan food.
And it's just where else is that do you find these values so prevalent and yet so vilified
at the same time?
Well, Donnie, you said that anti Zionism was anti-Semitism.
What do you make and that 95% of Jews, something like that, the overwhelming majority agrees
with that?
What do you make of those vegan Jewish activists who take the side of being anti Zionists?
And I've heard some of that coming from just I noted his name Alex Hirschhaft, Ivan Redd,
Peter Singer, you know, writing things along those lines.
What do you make of those Jewish vegans in the community?
Well, I don't.
And first of all, there's a distinction to be made between between criticizing Israel's
policies, which is fair.
I mean, it doesn't feel like a double standard in light of horrible things that are happening
in Sudan and Congo and all over the world, why the whole world has chosen to focus on
on Israel.
Again, that just feels like a double standard and stoop steeped in anti-Semitism.
So I don't know if the the individuals who you mentioned are truly believe that Israel
doesn't have a right to exist, or if they were critiquing Israeli policy, disagreeing
with Israeli's military operations, suggesting that they employ different strategy.
I don't know, but there are, of course, in any group, there are going to be people at
the extreme, people who vote against their own interests, people who just want to jump
on a bandwagon, people want to be accepted by the larger community.
It would be easier for me to say right now that Zionism is terrorism, and Zionism is
racism, and Zionism is colonialism, and and get back to being the animal rights activist
I was before than it is to stand up for the truth and to stand up in principle.
So there are always there are always going to be people who on the fringe, who are going
to speak out and maybe take this alternative view.
Maybe others have another explanation.
Well at the very least, they were not vocal about the anti-Semitism that everyone on this
call has been the victim of, you know, in terms of denouncing it.
People are afraid.
I just want to just interrupt.
Yesterday I watched the closing ceremony or the closing session of the Anti-Defamation
Leaks annual summit at the Javits Center in New York, and one of the keynote speakers was
David Schwimmer, the actor from Friends, and he said, look, it might be uncomfortable to
speak out.
But I think that people have been alienated and isolated and criticized and, you know,
canceled in some circles for speaking out against anti-Semitism.
But he encouraged people in Hollywood, people with a platform in the music industry and
the sports industry and entertainment industry to use their platforms to speak out because
people like us who are public figures need that solidarity.
We need to see that and we need people with huge platforms to correct the record, to go
on record and say what's really happening here.
And I'll be.
Yeah, I think it just comes down to cowardice.
You know, it's people are afraid of real activism, which is interesting because activism
that asks something of you that asks you to step out on a limb that asks you to put yourself
in an unflattering light, I guess.
And yeah, that's just, that's really where I can come to a conclusion on is that just
people are scared of what someone might say about them online.
Who cares?
You know, like I get that people have social media followings that are like, you know,
part of their income and things like that.
But I mean, so someone says something negative about you online.
Some skinny tattooed punk vegan says something about you.
You care?
Who cares?
Shiny.
I think not only what Bobby and Ryan said about being cowards and afraid to go against
the stream, which the stream and the majority of the movement, the progressive movement
and the veian movement is anti Zionist.
And I say that because we all know it means anti Semitism.
Not only that, I think it's mostly the lack of understanding that Judaism is a Zionist
movement.
What I mean is that for thousands of years, three thousands year, we are a people who speak
the same language, believe in the same book and pray for Zion.
It's part of Judaism.
So all these movement groups of not in my name or Jewish, Jewish voices for peace and
all these people who are in the costume of, oh, as a Jew, I don't stand for what Israel
does.
It's just they're using their Judaism to mask their self-hatred because if you are a Jewish,
you know that for, like I say, thousands of years, we've been speaking the same language
and all of our prayers and all of our costumes and traditions are aimed towards Israel.
All of our holidays, it's all stems from the land and the land of Israel.
So I think that lack of understanding that you cannot separate Judaism from Zionism
is also a driving force of those minority fringe Jewish people who jump to say, not
in my name.
I think it makes them feel more virtuous, more, I am Jewish and I'm against that.
So you can't say you're Jewish if you don't understand that basic, like the other name
of Israel is Zion.
So you cannot separate the two.
If you separate the two, you misunderstand the fundamental meaning of being Jewish.
So it's just ignorance and the need to be so virtuous above you.
I'm so moral.
That's the explanation that I get from that.
And ironically, I mean, I feel like displaying that level of hostility is just one more argument
to have a Jewish state and an army to be able to defend yourself.
Why is that issue the one that triggers vegans now?
Why was it not, I don't know how Turkey was taken over by basically a dictatorship and
thousands of journalists were thrown in prison.
Why was not maybe the persecution of the Uyghur people in China?
I could go down the list of horrid foreign tragedies, human rights in Iran.
The woman there, not wearing a hijab and being sent to prison for like eight years.
Why is this not the cause that vegans have adopted?
Why is it the Israeli conflict?
And I guess a second follow up question around that is why the vegan movement should anyway
talk about those social issues.
We're here for animals.
We're here to stop the exploitation of animals.
Why do we feel the need to disperse ourselves and talk about other social issues?
Why are we not just solely focused on that very important issue that other groups, social
groups are not talking about?
Bobby?
Yeah, I think that that's the negative side of intersectionalism.
This is the idea that if I'm talking about veganism at a vegan event and not anything
else then I don't care about anything else other than veganism.
There's a very small percentage of the human population that has dedicated their lives
to the liberation of animals.
And all those other topics do is turn our attention to human centric causes when we're
taking the small time that we have to look at animals and help animals.
And I think to your first question, yeah, when you look at like child soldiers in Africa,
what's happening in the Congo or the Muslims in China that are being rounded up by the
millions, all these things are, you know, what's happening in Turkey, what's happening
in Syria, all these problems.
It's like people say, well, they care about these problems too.
Well, I'm sorry, I don't see the same vitriol and hatred that I see towards Israel.
And it's not a complicated answer.
It's anti-Semitism.
That's all it is.
Anti-Semitism and an easy target and an easy villain.
It's like, oh, they're the problem, you know, because, you know, if you talk about child
soldiers, that's a complicated issue in Africa.
There's a lot going on.
And like to understand that geopolitical landscape and people claiming that they understand the
political landscape of the Middle East, which is ridiculous, you know, but they don't have
to worry about that because they just have to say, oh, it's Jews.
You know, so that's easy.
I can get on this side.
That's where I think that comes from.
Donnie.
You asked why the focus on Israel as opposed to the Uyghurs, Sudan, Congo, places where
there are actual genocides taking place in no Jews, no news.
I think that's part of it.
I think that this conflict has given people who are anti-Semitic a platform to spew anti-Semitic
hate, but sort of hide behind a Kaffee or the, you know, a mask of anti-Semitism.
But it's anti-Semitism.
Why, again, why have all of these large multinational animal rights organizations addressed only
one geopolitical issue on their social media platforms, which have hundreds of thousands
of followers?
Why this and not all of these other horrible things that are happening?
And you know, it comes down to anti-Semitism.
Why did they choose to step out of their lane for this cause?
And so, yeah, again, it all comes back in the end.
It really does all come back to anti-Semitism.
Shani.
I just want to play a devil's advocate because that's what I do a lot.
Like I try to think like they think, like I try to think, what would they say to that?
Like why do you concentrate on Israel so much?
And I want to ask the group, what would you say to the people who say, well, in Sudan
and Congo and all of these places, U.S. don't play a major role in being ally, like they're
ally to Israel and these people who are protesting and like are so vocal about Israel and what's
happening in the Israel-Gaza war, what would you say to those people who say, well, the
U.S. government don't fund Congo.
They don't fund these places.
This is the one conflict that they can put an impact on because this is their country.
Like if it's protesters from the U.S., let's say, or Canada or U.K., these are places who
actively and financially support in Israel and are allies.
And that is their reason why they concentrate on this conflict because this is the one conflict
that they can impact on with protesting.
What would you say to these people?
I'd like to hear what that group say because this is an answer that I can hear at pro-Palestinian
activists say, well, we can't control this, but we can control that.
What would you say to those people?
Miran.
I would say ironically for at least some part of the war, the U.S. was actually in some
way funding both sides.
So I don't see that really being addressed, whether it's the resources that Hamas was
getting through Iran or aid that ended up in Hamas's hands that was then used, whether
that's fuel for rockets or whatever.
It's not as clear cut as people might assume that Israel is the only one, whether it's
directly or indirectly being supported by the U.S., at least at some point, like in
2023.
And so, yeah, I mean, if you really want to talk about, like, if someone as an American
wants to talk about their country's involvement in this, at least talk about what's happening,
that both sides were getting some help, again, whether indirectly or directly from the U.S.
That's a great point.
Thank you for that.
Bobby.
Israel offers more aid to Gaza than any other country in the world.
This is a country that's basically at war with another country.
And while at the same time being expected to make sure that country is safe, make sure
that they have food and water and fuel and defend yourself, but when you do that, don't
hurt any of them.
It's this weird double standard that no other country has ever been held to.
It's ridiculous.
And I think that just becomes, it comes from a place where facts don't matter anymore.
You can look at objective truth right in the face and they'll just turn it the other way
because it doesn't align with their narrative.
It doesn't align with whatever is holding up their fragile little world that they've
built, so it makes them comfortable.
And I think the problem is that people aren't honest with themselves.
People are, oh, I know what's happening over there.
No, you don't.
Are you kidding?
Oh, I'm going to stop America from eating.
No one out there on protests on the street has the influence to change what America or
Israel is going to do in this situation.
They just want to be a virtue signaling loudmouth, patting themselves on the back as like on
the moral compass for everybody here.
That's what I mean.
We see that in all activism.
It's really unfortunate.
And I don't know how we can get back to people being willing to say, I don't know enough
about this to have an opinion.
You don't hear that anymore.
Donnie.
I think the objection that Shani raises that, oh, well, we're out on the streets because
we fund, the US funds Israel.
I think that those who do use that argument, for most of them, I believe that it's a smokescreen.
First of all, I don't believe that most people who are taking to the streets calling for a
global intifada and river to the sea, they don't know which river to which sea.
I don't think they would even be aware of the fact that Israel supports Israel but doesn't
support some of these other countries where atrocities are taking place.
I think that would be giving a lot of these activists too much credit.
But I will say also that I think for most people are followers and they're jumping on,
even if their participation isn't rooted in anti-Semitism, it's rooted by a desire to
be part of the issue du jour or to be part of a community or to get off of social media
and get into the streets with people.
There are many different reasons why people have joined this free Palestine, really anti-Israel
movement.
There are other examples that I can think of in recent history where people just jumped
on something that they knew nothing about and it became this trend.
I don't know if anybody here remembers, but there was a military leader in Uganda named
Kony who was rounding up children and turning them into soldiers.
There was all kinds of footage of these children with rifles, really disturbing.
It became this trend that everybody, this was probably right at the dawn of social media,
just jumped on this, we've got to track down Kony, this military leader.
It just became a thing in that moment and then it left.
And of course my hope is that this will eventually subside too and that sort of this anti-Semitic
vitriol and hate will go away.
And I guess that's my closing question for you.
How do you think or how do you feel about the future of the vegan movement, of animal
rights as it has displayed this level of, I would say, stupidity if we think about it
strategically and politically?
Why did we get into this?
Why did we create such division?
This has not helped the movement at all.
This has not saved any animal lives.
So how do you think about the future?
And do you have the same hope as Kony, you have expressed that this anti-Semitism, this
wave of anti-Semitism will go away and maybe with peace in the Middle East and we can at
last be a more unified vegan movement?
Bobby?
Yeah, I think the problem is that once vegan activists started becoming celebrities, it
became an egoic movement where people weren't interested in facts, people weren't interested
in effective communication and effective activism, they were interested in loud activism.
It was about, get your voice, be loud instead of be effective.
And I think that it's going to be trending that way.
I don't know what's going to happen with the animal rights movement, but at the same time
I don't excuse them for this because they use that way too often to avoid accountability.
A group will do something wrong and then say, well, if you attack us, then you're attacking
this group that's doing all this good for animals.
Well, I'm sorry, that was your mistake.
We can't just say, well, we can't attack vegan or animal rights organizations because
they're doing all this good work and they are doing good work for animals.
But that's not a shield, it's a real hypocritical, disgusting shield that they hold out in front
of them so that they can say, well, yes, we said that, so what?
You can't do what you want to publicly shame us and hurt our funding and hurt our work.
It became all these different groups being the veganist vegan group instead of all of
us working together on the same cause, which is what we started out as.
But now it's too self-interested.
I don't know what's going to happen, but I think that the ego needs to go away.
We've all heard that change starts with, first there's awareness, then conversation, then
change.
We've been doing awareness for 80 years.
We've been doing a yelling and screaming at people's faces so that they can hear us since
1940.
When the word vegan first showed up, the world is what?
1% vegan?
I think everyone here is smart enough to realize maybe that approach isn't working anymore,
maybe it's time to move to conversation.
But that's the hard part that not everybody can be involved in and that doesn't get likes
on Instagram.
So I don't know what's going to happen.
In the introduction, I talked about the breaking point and I can't help but feel like this
rise of anti-semitism, this division is a symptom of something else, maybe a transformation
in this movement more than the central thing.
So yeah, anyone else want to jump in?
Mira?
It's interesting you said a symptom of a larger problem because there is that phrase that's
often attributed to anti-semitism especially when it exponentially grows in a society or
a specific country that it's the canary in the coal mine.
I don't know if it's technically speciesist because canaries were used in the coal mine
to see if they died and there's a sign that something's not safe down there, which obviously
is horrible.
But that kind of countries that devolved into rampant anti-semitism ended up having larger
issues and anti-semitism and that society was rotting.
Just to your point, it has historically shown that way that we're kind of like the first
line of defense that something's wrong.
I personally, because of the anti-semitism experience, it has for better or for worse
allowed me to see that there are issues in my own community that I can address, whether
or not that will be easy as a separate question.
But in a way I feel like if I'm willing to do it and I have the knowledge since it is
my community, I have more knowledge than someone that's outside the Jewish community,
hopefully I can use that to my advantage.
Kind of like I said, fill in gaps that I'm seeing.
I'm in the process of trying to launch an organization that will be based in Israel,
but then kind of spread out to Jewish communities around the world because there are decisions,
especially like in Israel there was a decision to make certain methods when slaughtering animals
illegal and then that spread to a big kosher certification organization that's based in
diaspora like around the world.
They implemented that into their organization as well.
They won't certify animal bodies that I guess were killed with that method.
It does have a ripple effect.
The aim for that is to kind of take like a macro look at the movement in Israel as a
whole and see kind of what approaches are maybe not implemented as much and assist in
making and kind of plugging in the holes and creating like a unifying message in the
community and allowing for more collaboration.
So it kind of can be more cohesive and yeah, kind of just looking at where I can help.
So that is my plan to still stick more within the spaces I'm already in as a Jew because
yeah, I think what better way to make an impact than the communities I'm already in I guess.
Donnie.
I would say over the past, since 10.7, I've spent way more time than I want addressing
anti-Semitism because I felt like I absolutely have to be irresponsible not to and I've done
that at the expense of time that I would have normally spent advocating for animals and
that's a shame and I really look forward to a time when that ends because my heart is
within this movement.
My heart is in animal rights and as Bobby said earlier on, how I am an activist will
change or already has changed but I'll always be here for the animals because that's where
my heart is, that's where my passion is.
Bobby.
Yeah, I think that I'm guessing that almost every Jewish vegan animal rights activist had
the same experience where I spent the last 10 years working with people like Sean Monson
and Moby going inside slaughterhouses, going undercover into factory farms, literally being
at a slaughterhouse three times a week every week for six years to the point where I was
in a mental health clinic for 12 weeks and I was known for that.
That's who I was.
I was the guy who was organizing all the vigils and the guy who was cinematographer for Sean
Monson and doing all this frontline activism, rescuing over 100 and something animals and
all of that went away on October 8th and I became a Jewish vegan and I became a vegan
who couldn't work with groups that was, I was working with groups where it was my dream
to work with them.
Activists and artists who I was so excited to finally be working with and then they started
posting things and I was in good conscious, couldn't continue working for the organization
and so now here I am in Austin, I'm not in LA anymore, struggling with a real identity
crisis on what I'm going to dedicate the rest of my life to and how is that going to
look, what is that going to look like because even though it was detrimental to my health,
if someone said, hey, we need you to go and film inside a slaughterhouse right now, I
would do it in a heartbeat because that's where my passion lies, right?
But I can't in good conscious promote groups that promote hate and so I feel completely,
it's like in a spy movie where the main character realizes they've been double crossed and what
they thought was friendly ground is now enemy territory and they don't know what to do or
who to trust or where to go and that's where I am right now and I think that there's a
lot of Jewish vegan activists that are feeling like that.
Shani, did you want to add something or?
I didn't because my view on it is really pessimistic so I don't know where we go from here and
I'm so connected to what Ryan just said, I, as a Jewish animal activist, I just feel homeless
right now.
I feel like almost the need of reinventing ourselves in that space which is just hurting
the movement because like I said at the beginning, our power is in numbers, the more we grow
the movement, the more it becomes more mainstream, the more veganism, lifestyle and the liberation
of animals is on the table.
The more people joining, we want to get to a point of critical mess, we all know that
term of like when it becomes like a bit more common, your last look at the point is weird
or fringe and this divisiveness in our movement just hurting our movement and it's just, I
don't know if we can ever recover from that because like just like Ryan just said, you
feel like in your own movement you don't know who to trust, you don't know who's, I can't
see myself going back to the community here almost to a point where I have like serious,
serious thoughts of going back to Israel because I feel so alienated in Vancouver as a large
and the vegan movement especially.
So I didn't want to say anything because I'm pretty pessimistic about what's the future
of that look like but I, one can only hope that we will find those spaces to keep advocating
for animal rights and the liberation of animals from our plates, from our culture, clothing,
whatever all the implications of that.
But right now I don't see the way out, I don't see how this becoming, how this goes away,
I wish I had better answers but yeah.
Donnie?
This is a little bit out of place but one of the things that has struck me and over the
past year and however long it's been since 10-7 is that our colleagues in the movement
have been sort of attacking Israel and attacking us under the guise of free Palestine but I've
never heard anyone in the movement state the obvious that if they really genuinely cared
about the plight of people living in Gaza, why aren't they calling to free Palestine
from Hamas which strips people of their human rights, which uses their citizens as human
shields, which reigns with terror.
It's hard to even take their approach and their point of view seriously when they're
not even stating the obvious that if they believe that the people living in Gaza are
victims, who are they victims of?
Israel wants nothing more than to live in peace with their neighbors but their neighbor,
the leadership of their neighbors and many just plain old civilians state openly, proudly,
publicly that their desire is to wipe Israel and Jews off the face of the earth.
As Golda Meir once famously stated, how do you negotiate with people who have come to
kill you?
And there's just never any discussion about that in our movement and so it just reaffirms
this feeling that I have that all of this free Palestine activism is rooted in hate
against Israel and Jews more than a desire to actually help the people who they're claiming
to advocate for.
Bobby?
Yeah, I completely agree.
I try to make this comparison when I'm talking to people.
It would be like the KKK starting an uprising in, I don't know, Mississippi or wherever,
you know, West Virginia and then asking all the African Americans and Jews, why can't
you guys just, you know, like, figure this out, get along?
You know, when it says, and when it says in Hezbollah's basically charter on their flag
that we are here to destroy Israel and to destroy Jews, when Hamas says we are here
to destroy Israel and destroy Jews and then you say, well, they're a political party.
Why can't you guys just get along?
You know, you wouldn't say that if it was someone in a clan outfit coming on the news
and spouting out hate and you go, oh, that's a political party.
This is ridiculous.
Yes, Tony.
On October 7 and October 8 when the video footage of the hostages that were recorded
by Hamas and civilians who participated in that attack, when we started to see that,
what we saw is thousands of civilians in Gaza and Hamas taking to the streets cheering
over the bodies of dead and bloodied people who were in Israel, whether they were Israelis
or visitors in Israel, just the people who were taken hostage.
You just would never see anything like that on the other side of the border in Israel.
And so, you know, for me as a Jewish person, you know, I don't know, I don't know what
the way forward is for Israel.
How do people in this country, the peace-loving Kibbutzniks who lived on the border with Gaza
who were transporting people from Gaza into Israel for medical treatment at Israeli hospitals,
you know, who were then victims of Hamas and were still being held captive by Hamas, how
do they go on?
And so, I just, I want to be here as an American, as a Jew and as an animal rights activist
to say that, you know, I support them and will continue to advocate for them until this
nightmare is over one way or another.
Bobby?
Yeah, I think that one thing that was so telling for me was on October 8th, when all these
videos are coming out, this goes to my point to where people just make up their own reality.
People were saying, oh, well, that didn't really happen.
I was like, it did happen.
And that's Hamas showing you and bragging about it, that it happened.
And they're like, no, that's all fake.
You know, what are you supposed to say when if you're having a conversation with someone
and all they do is bark, no at you?
You know, they don't have anything to back up their beliefs other than hate.
And so it's like, Jews are good people.
No, they're not.
Why not?
Because they're not.
Okay, I guess this conversation's over, you know, because they're just not willing to
believe it.
And so that's where my, people call it pessimism, I call it realism, comes into, I don't know
because this speaks to a larger problem in terms of a lot of other groups and a lot of
other issues where people just say, that's just not true.
The earth is flat.
You know, how do you know?
I just, I just know, I just feel like that's true.
Oh, okay.
I guess that's good enough then.
You know, it's a form of negationism, like Holocaust denial, shiny.
And to what just Ryan just said, on one hand, there's this like, belentled denial of what
happened on October 7, but then on the other hand, they praise what happened on October
7 and said it was a great act of resistance.
So which one is it?
Because they just keep contradicting themselves all the time, which is funny from, for someone
who knows exactly what is happening to see it from the side, it's like, so which one
is it?
Did it happen or did it not happen?
Just another point of like, you guys have no idea what you're talking about.
Yeah, I feel like, you know, creating this podcast and really, you know, diving deep
into the world of vegan activism.
I have found that this division exists with many other groups, not as strong, you know,
as with Jewish vegans, you know, the level of hostility and all of that, what we have
covered in the past hour.
But you know, you talk with vegans who label themselves as conservatives and, you know,
they will tell you, I don't feel welcome in this community or vegans who are Christians
and they will tell you, hey, my way of doing veganism is not, you know, what is represented
usually in the community as a general rule.
You know, I did the whole episode debunking the documentary Christ, piracy, you know,
presenting the perspective of Christians on that documentary.
But things like that, you know, it again, I go back to that point of this being a symptom
of something else that is wrong in this movement.
Bobby.
Yeah.
And to your point with like conservatives, that has been a problem that has been bothering
me ever since I became a vegan is that they don't want to leave the echo chamber.
Like I said, they want it to be easy activism.
They don't like, you know, we all want people who think differently than us.
What are you talking about?
Of course you want people who think differently than you.
It's not doing us any good just preaching to the choir, but they're unwilling to do
it because they say, oh, they're, you know, it's again, the binary view of the world.
Oh, conservative, bad, you know, non-vegan, bad.
And it's just unwilling to see the complexity in things.
And this idea that, you know, a conservative would never be vegan is ridiculous.
My father's conservative, he's vegan, you know, it's just, again, I think it just comes
down to lazy, easy activism where they're not really confronted that much by opposing
views.
And if they are all that they do is scream and shout as loud as they can.
And they think that they sort of had some sort of impact.
I think until we can get over that, until we can get over ourselves and not make it
about how angry we are and instead make it about how effective we can be, I think we're
going to be in a stalemate for a while.
I will put an end to this conversation because, you know, I want to respect your time.
And let me just say, you know, this has been an honor talking with you.
Thank you so much for having shared, you know, your insights and your experience.
I really hope that this podcast makes some small difference in showing a different perspective
to, again, those activists who are in this echo chamber and, you know, are not seeing
the light anymore, are bombarded with the same messaging.
I do think that there are plenty of vegans and I've talked with some of them who are
silently supportive of, you know, the Jewish cause and are really not happy about what
has happened in the past year with anti-Semitism.
But again, you know, I would have expected that a movement like veganism, which is highly
non-conformist, would be more likely to speak up about those issues, have the courage to
do so.
But yeah, thank you so much.
I'm really happy to have done this.
Any parting words?
I just wanted to say thank you for creating that space, creating this conversation because
I don't think there's anything that the movement is facing right now that is more important
than that because just like Mera said, this is just the canary in the coal mine and this
is just the beginning of the erosion if you look at the history.
So thank you for addressing it.
Thank you for having me, having us, having this conversation.
It is super important to me.
And I love everything that everyone said, I'm connected deeply to the arguments and the
examples that everyone has just shared.
And I just wanted to say thank you so much for creating space for this conversation.
Thank you, Shani.
Doni?
By virtue of giving us a platform to talk about this issue, something which we have desperately
needed, you're going to be subjecting yourself to criticism.
So I just want to thank you for going out on a limb for us, for the Jewish community,
and for giving us this platform to talk about what we've experienced and how we're feeling.
Thank you, Doni.
Mera?
I very much second what Doni said.
Thank you so much for reaching out and for wanting to have this conversation in the first
place and making it, I guess, a discussion with more than just one Jew to kind of see
that there are multiple Jewish voices that are on the same page.
And I really hope that you won't be, I guess, on the receiving end of too much hate, which
sometimes does come along with, you know, I guess, going against the grain regarding
things around the Jewish community and Israel.
So yeah, just thank you so much.
Thank you, Mera.
Thank you everyone for listening.
I kindly invite you to share this podcast with the vegans you know.
Let's encourage more people to take action.
Again, thank you so much for caring, and I will see you next Tuesday for a new episode.
I just want to say sorry, but the way that the Zoom was shown to me, I kept calling Bobby
Ryan, so I just realized that.
So if that confused anyone, the names just didn't show up properly.
So technical thing, but sorry, Bobby, for misnaming you the whole time.