Episode 58: Animal Rights in Palestine and Israel with Esther Alloun

05/02/2018

 

***Intro Music***

SO: Hey guys, welcome to knowing animals the podcast. Knowing Animals is a podcast where we talk to animal study scholars about a piece of their work. I'm Siobhan O’Sullivan and I do like KNOWING ANIMALS.

Now this episode of Knowing Animals as always is brought to you by our very good friends ASA. ASA is the Australasian Animal Studies Association. ASA is the membership organisation for animal study scholars in Australia, in NZ and around the world. ASA have a fantastically active FB page in which they post information about upcoming conferences, events, exhibitions, call for papers, funding opportunities and they also have they're own website, so why not check out ASA the Australasian Animals Study Association online and also think about joining ASA. Membership is just $50. Support the organisation that supports animal study scholars. So this episode of KNOWING ANIMALS comes to you from Sydney town, where I'm lucky to be joined by Esther Alloun! Esther is a PhD candidate at the UOW. Today we're discussing her article – “That’s the beauty of it - its very simple - animal rights in settler colonialism in Palestine Israel.” It appeared in the journal settler colonial studies in December 2017. Welcome to the podcast Esther.

EA: Thanks Siobhan!


SO: Can you start by telling us why you wrote this piece?

EA: So I guess my interest in the topic dates back to 2014/2015 when I started reading about what was happening in Israel and how it was becoming the first began nation, the Promised Land for vegans. Statistics like 8% of population being began or vegetarian which is the like the highest per capita in the world.

I was quite shocked and quite surprised by the whole thing because I guess being Jewish of an Arab background an I have family who lives in Israel as well and also being a vegan and an animal rights activist I was surprised that Israelis would become vegan or mass and all of a sudden they had an interest in animal rights.

SO: Ok, so you have a lot of things coming together - you have your own personal heritage, you have your commitment to veganism and animal rights yourself and also a connection with the Middle East. So how did you go about collecting the data for this piece?

EA: So this is part of the ethnographic research I did in 2017. I went to Palestine and Israel and I interviewed over 55 people, BRUCE (5:28) and mainly actually Jewish Israelis and also Palestinians. Palestinians both in Israel proper and also in the occupied territories in the west bank and I was trying to get a sense of what was they're experience of doing animal rights activism, what does it look like in the context, like Israel and Palestine.

SO: That was one of my questions - your what we call data other people call interviews, you had a really amazing access which I find a lot of people would find really difficult - was that difficult to organise?

EA: It was quite stressful to begin with because I guess I had some key people that I knew I wanted to interview mainly because I had identified them through looking at news articles on the topic and they're names just kept coming up, so I just thought that these are the movers and shakers of the movement - I need to interview them. Facebook was also very helpful and very conducive to making those connections. But definitely in terms of the Middle Eastern culture making specific appointments and getting people to stick to that in terms of the logistics is actually really difficult. Once I let go of some of those expectations and just followed the flow - attended protests, attended meetings, started talking to people, it got a lot easier.

SO: Hmm, wonderful. So, what you found was that the way in which the Jewish Israeli animal rights activists and the Palestinian animal rights activists do their activism is very different - can you start by telling us what you observed as being the identifiable features of the Jewish Israel animal rights activists?

EA: Sure, I guess I'm going to try and generalise and make it quite concise. Two main features are that in terms of the JI animal rights movement is that its single issues, so its solely focussed on animals and animals rights and veganism to the exclusion of all else. Secondly, it’s also very actively depoliticised. So you know they would endlessly [activists] tell me how it’s not political, how it’s not connected to politics and by politics it’s also important to understand that in the Israeli context politics means the occupation and the conflict. They have other words and other terms for economic issues or social issues, so that's the sort of activism that they do and they want to do and they insist on doing.

SO: Hmm, so then turning our attention to the Palestinian activists, how did you observe or understand theory animal rights activism.

EA: So I guess first I should say that the Palestinian activists that I write about in this piece are Palestinian who live in the west bank, in the occupied West bank and that’s important in terms of the positionality in this whole context. So these people are under occupation - violent occupation and they also do animal rights activism, so I guess the defining characteristic of what they do is that they cannot separate animal rights from human rights, and the oppression of animals and that of people. Actually they constantly draw connections and parallels between those two things. So they see animal rights and animal activism and animal welfare I guess as part of like almost building a strong civil Palestinian society as ending what one of the participants said ending the cycle of violence in Palestine, that’s how they see animal rights.

SO: Hmm, and so you then go on and read into these different ways of doing animal rights activism among people who live side by side or share the same community in summergods as saying something about the colonial experience. Can you tell listeners what conclusions you draw about these different modes?

EA: Yes, in terms of the settler colonial experience I think it puts people into very different positions so on the settler side so the Israeli settler side one of the conclusions that I drew out of this was that they can afford not to talk about politics and not to be concerned about politics because they are on the privileged side of that equation, because they don't really have to if they don't want to because they don't suffer the consequences of the occupation. That's one and I guess on the other side which is the indigenous Palestinian side they have very little choice but to weave together their animal rights activism and their experience of being oppressed because

even strategically if they didn't do that you know the Palestinian society or the Palestinian people around them wouldn’t listen to them, its a matter of also making it relevant, is to weave those things together.

SO: Yes, so you have an interest in case study in the piece about dog shelter for free living dogs, can you tell listeners a little bit about what was going one there and how you understand that example within the context of Israeli Palestinian relations.

EA: Yes, that's a very fascinating example and I wanted to write about it a lot more than what was allowed in the short word count but essentially it is a dog shelter in Bethlehem so in the occupied west bank, that’s being started by very dedicated women, Palestinian animal lovers and at some point in the 2010's around there, she got in trouble because she couldn’t pay the vet bills and the operation of the shelter etc. and she reached out to the Palestine community and she couldn't find any sponsors any money and eventually there is this Israeli organisation called protection petro... I cant remember what it stands for, and they helped her crowdfund to get enough money to keep the shelter to expand the operation of the shelter and so this example is really interesting because it troubles the binary that I just described - on the one hand Palestinians saying animal rights is part of our liberation movement and we don't really want to work with Israelis like a lot of Palestinian animal advocates in the west bank don't want to work with Israelis at all, but this woman in that particular position, she accepted and welcomed that help from the Israelis for the sake of the animals! So, what does this mean for animal advocacy in that region? I think it's a really interesting example

SO: Well, yes that case really got me thinking and I was wondering what your view s from the animals’ perspectives, do you think a particular way of doing animal rights activism matters to them, or what do you think?

EA: That's a very good question and i often come back to it when i get tangled in this very messy political situation when you have animal suffering and a lot of it and human suffering in parallel. And that's also the argument used by some of the Israeli AA. They say well animals wouldn't care whether we are Israelis or Palestinian and what we do to other humans so I’m not entirely sure how to answer your question. Maybe from the animals perspective it doesn't matter, probably perhaps in the short term I guess but I think in the big picture you can't extract the human animal relationship from the context in which it is happening so for me those two things really go together.

SO: Do you see effective animal activism in Israel to start with? 

EA: What do you mean by effective?

SO: Generating change perhaps? Would say animals from they're perspective would there be any perceivable increase in needs of their welfare or they're rights to life or something like that?

EA: Well I guess the movement has been successful in terms of legal and legislative changes to an extent - Israel banned circuses and cosmetic testing on animals and live dissection in high schools, has been trying to ban fur for which I wrote another article about this, and you know its hard to quantify in terms of the impact that Israeli vegans are having on saving the lives of animals, I don't think its that straightforward, but yes to an extent in terms of what activists call mainstream veganism or animal activism they are being quite successful at doing this. I guess at what cost to other political movements is always the question I come back to.

SO: And what about in Palestine or say in the occupied territories, are they having a positive impact on the lives of animals?

EA: Oh yes, I think most definitely they are having a very positive impact, even just in terms of just a big area that they work on is education, and educating people about animal welfare, particularly work or working animals like donkeys, horses, they have entire programs dedicated to educating people who use horses, donkeys. They also have a model, what a good god and healthy vegan diet can look like with the cafeteria that I write about in the article. I think they have very successful programs and they're doing a lot of great work on the very difficult circumstances.

SO: Do you have any theories or thoughts on why they might focus on animals when there’s so much human suffering around them?

EA: They get asked that question all the time. Usually they're response is (if I understand it well) is to say that the two go together and it goes back to that idea of the cycle of violence and you know reproducing the violence that is done to them by Israelis or Jewish settlers and how that gets perpetuated through violence on animals is something that they want to change. The second thing is that it is also something that I mention in the paper - they also focus on animals because they think its part of building a strong civil society and that’s what they want in the future Palestinian state and lastly I think they also say that and I think that’s a very profound insight is the fact that they are oppressed, the fact that they suffer so much doesn't give them an excuse so to speak to then go and oppress others and I think that's quite profound actually.

SO: Interesting. So Esther I ask everybody who comes on Knowing Animals to answer 5 quick questions - are you ready to answer 5 quick questions?
Can you recall the first piece of pro animal scholarship you ever read?

EA: Yes, it was an edited book called “Critical theory and animal liberation”, and the piece that I remember really the most about this was this Val Plumwood paper that was about the critique of sustainable meat and the locavore movement.

SO: Oh great, can you recall the first piece of pro animal scholarship you ever wrote?

EA: So besides what I wrote during my masters which probably doesn't count, it was an article that I published in the animal studies journal on ecofeminism and veganism using the work of Val Plumwood.

SO: Oh, wonderful. If you had to name one animal study scholar who’s had a big impact on you who would it be?

EA: So with this question I think I mean the politics of citation is something I take very seriously, I academia in general and in the field of animal studies in particular because we often forget legacies and who dies what so I deliberately picked a woman and I think it would be Claire Jean Kim and her book “Dangerous crossings - race species and nature in a multicultural age”, she has really influenced my work.

SO: Wonderful, did you hear her speak when she was in Sydney a few years ago? 

EA: No, but I saw the recording of it.

SO: Yes, it was very interesting.
What's the most important thing academics can do for animals?

EA: That’s a really tough one. So, I guess keep writing about animals and the violence that’s done to them and ways to challenge that violence and I think there are many ways. Not being afraid of doing engaged scholarship and eating delicious vegan food in front of your colleagues as well.

SO: So if you had the power to change 1 thing about the human-non human relationship what would it be?

EA: It would be I think I would want for animals not to be commodities and objects and property and that will be a good place to start.

SO: Wonderful. So Esther what are you working on next?

EA: My thesis which at the moment I am writing a chapter on the early Israeli animal rights movement which was heavily influenced by anarchist beliefs actually. also a piece on animal nationalisms, hopefully that will be in a journal issue that edited by Yamini Narayanan and Knowing Animalsthryn Gillespie. Also hopefully going back to Palestine in May to do a little bit more fieldwork with Palestinian animal rights advocates.

SO: So how can people find out more about your work?

EA: I have an academia.edu page, so just search my name, also you can follow me on twitter. Just search my name.

SO: Well Esther thank you so much for joining us for KNOWING ANIMALS and thank you to the listeners for joining us for KNOWING ANIMALS animals podcast where we talk to animal study scholars about their work. Don't forget to follow us on twitter at knowing_animals or you can follow me on SO_S. We also have a Facebook page and finally, do you know what I’m going to say? That’s right - don't forget to leave a review! Reviews make it easier for people to find us.
I'm Siobhan O’ Sullivan and I do like Knowing Animals. 

The UK's KFC Chicken 'Crisis' and eating Meat

Apparently the UK has run out of Chicken. Okay, they have not run out of chicken as such. But KFC has a supply chain problem of such monumental proportions that they are unable to get chicken to all their 900 stores. At last count,

160 stores across the UK had been forced to closed. Some news sites are reporting that 640 branches were shut at the height of the crisis.  

This has been big news and hard to miss. As a vegan, and user of social media, I have good reason to believe that my world view is skewed towards vegetarian-friendly news. It is certainly true that I rarely hear much about what’s happening in the world of chicken-eating. At the same time, my news feed is filled with inspiring stories of people turning vegetarian, or opening successful vegan businesses.

So what lessons might I take away from the biggest chicken-eating-related story of the decade?

1.     People will not give up their chicken lightly.

Under normal condition, in a three-month period, an estimated 43% of Britons will buy takeaway from a fast food restaurant that sells chicken.  

As the chicken drought took hold this week, news reports out of the UK suggest that some chicken meat lovers had become so distraught that they turned to the police for help. Both London and Manchester police issued statements saying that a lack of chicken does not come under their perve, and that fast food junkies should stop calling. Of course, it may be withdrawal from the secret herbs and spices that is actually causing the distress. After all, many other fast food restaurants also sell chicken.

But it seems clear that the thought of going without your favourite chicken meat for a couple of days is highly destabilising for some. According to the Metro newspaper, a bucket of KFC chicken currently fetches around £100, on e-Bay.

2.      The world is not on the cusp of turning vegan.

While I dearly hope that one day future generations will mock me for making this claim, based on the evidence available now, I think it is unlikely.

It seems to me that the number of people who identify as vegan, vegetarian, or who simply have meat free days, is increasing. But that increase is small compared to global population increases and the number of people eschewing traditional diet in favour of meat-heavy western diets. Moreover, what the KFC crisis tells me is that for some people meat eating is such a deeply entrenched behaviour that an alternative is unthinkable.  

3.     Harm minimisation via legislation is vitally important.

Meat eating is a deeply harmful practice. Broiler chickens are among the most miserable of all factory farmed animals. Their lives are short, and then they are killed to become nuggets. Meat is also environmentally harmful. It is water intensive, linked to de-forestation, and responsible for an estimated 18% of human produced greenhouse gas.

Yet many people are deeply committed to meat-eating.

There is a debate that rages among animal advocates about the best way to stop (or minimise) meat consumption. On one view, the state has failed to act, and therefore the way forward is to address individuals not as citizens, but as consumers. Get people to ‘do the right thing’ at the checkout.

I commend those who spend their time trying to make the world a better place in this way. But I simply cannot imagine the type of person who phones the police because their local KFC is closed for week, turning vegan.

In my opinion, we must also insist that the government shows leadership. We need to ask law makers to use their power (which we give them) to make the lives of broiler hens less horrible. This approach is unlikely to save them from death. But we can also insist that their death be less gruesome. We can punish those who do not comply. We can also ask the state to include environmental externalities in the cost of meat production.

So while the UK wakes to another day of KFC rations, the lesson for me is that meat-eating stirs great passion in some. But that passion is destructive. While I don’t know that I can persuade enthusiastic meat-eaters to like tofu. I do think it is reasonable for law makers to insist that meat-eaters take responsibility for the harm they do. It worked for cigarettes. Let’s try it with meat.

Is it okay to trespass in the name of animal rights?

In preparing for the international Human-Animal Studies conference Minding Animals Two, which is taking place in Utrecht, The Netherlands, starting on July 6th, I have been thinking about animal rights and whether it might be morally and/or legally permissible to trespass to learn about how animals live and die on private property. 

Animal advocates have a long history of trespass. Often referred to as 'open rescue', animal advocates often illegally enter intensive agricultural units (factory farms), film inside, and then distribute the footage. 

While this is common practice among animal advocates, it is not a topic academics have turned their attention to.

•   Is trespass necessary to protect the interests of animals?

•   How might we learn about the way animals live and die without trespass?

•   Under what conditions might trespass be permissible? 

•   How might we protect modern property rights generally, while tolerating trespass where animals live on private property?

These and other questions have been on my mind in preparing my conference paper for Minding Animals.


My thinking has been aided by this week's media around the intensive rearing of ducks for meat.
On June 19th, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)'s 7.30 Report aired a story they titled 'Disturbing footage prompts calls for duck farming changes'. 

The story featured two types of footage about intensive duck farming: footage shot 'covertly' by Animal Liberation NSW, and footage shot by the ABC, taken with the farm owner's consent. 

Below is a still from the Animal Liberation covert footage. It shows a duck with his/her wing caught in wire mesh.

What was fascinating about the 7.30 Report story is that both sets of footage would appear to be critical to understanding the intensive duck meat story. On the one hand some birds have access to sunlight and some freedom of movement. On the other hand, some birds live in very cramped conditions and among unsuitable material, such as wire mesh.

If it is true that both sets of footage tell us something important about how ducks are raised for meat in Australia, how would we be able to learn about intensive duck production without trespass?

My colleagues and I are still working on the paper. I look forward to feedback from others at the conference and I will report back on how it goes.  

Sex, PETA & Porn

In my last blog post Sex Sells - but should it be used to sell an animal rights message? I talked about my preparations for a discussion I was to lead at Las Vegan Bakery. 


The discussion group has been and gone and as a result I have heard some interesting thoughts about the use of sexual images and animal rights.


In commencing the discussion I began my arguing that to answer the question 'should sex be used to sell an animal rights message' we first have to ask ourselves, 'should sex be used to sell any message'? If the answer is 'no' then there is no need for further discussion. If the answer is 'yes' then the next question we need to ask is: 'is there something particular about animal protection which means that sex is not an appropriate communication tool'? In other words, do the ends justify the means?


Views within the discussion group were mixed. Some people maintained that the sexualisation of women (and girls) for the purposes of selling goods, services and messages, is always wrong. It is always wrong because the images were receive are highly stylised and they harm women who do not find themselves living inside the perfect model-shaped body.


Others thought that the use of sex to sell an animal rights message may be morally permissible, but the permissibility is dependent on the message being effective. Does a promise of sex translate into behaviour change that can help protect animals from harm?


In discussing the impact of the use of sexual images the conversation quickly turned to PETA, the world's largest animal rights organisation, and the organisation most often associated with sex, nudity and more recently, pornography. 


The group watched the PETA ad from earlier this year in which a young woman appears to be seriously injured. The tag line is that her boyfriend went  vegan and as a result became so vigorous in bed that he seriously hurt her. You can watch the ad on YouTube by clicking here: Boyfriend Went Vegan

A question that hung over the discussion group was: would such an ad result in meaningful, long-term behaviour change?


Members of the group also talked about the difference between sex, sexualisation and porn. It was argued by some that PETA has moved away from sex, and towards porn, with the launch of its xxx website. However, in the three days between when I posted Sex Sells - but should it be used to sell an animal rights message? and the discussion group, the PETA porn site disappeared. The domain is now a much more tradition PETA website. It contains no explicit images, but rather a serious of animal right videos.


Another clever marketing ploy by PETA, or something else? I look forward to learning more. 
  


  

Sex Sells - but should it be used to sell an animal rights message?

Las Vegan Bakery on Smith Street, Melbourne hosts a regular animal rights discussion group. I have been invited as special guest speaker this Wednesday and the topic they have set me is: Sex Sells - but should it be used to sell an animal rights message?


So what do I think about the link between sex, sexism and animal rights?


Carol Adams famously began the conversation with the publication of The Sexual Politics of Meat in 1990.  

In Carol Adams' own words:

The 'Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory' explores a relationship between patriarchal values and meat eating by interweaving the insights of feminism, vegetarianism, animal defense, and literary theory.


Yet despite warnings from Carol Adams and others about the link between the exploitation and subjugation of women and nonhuman animals, sex is regularly used to promote an animal rights message. 


People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) claims to be the world's biggest animal rights organisation. It is also the organisations most famous for using images of naked, or semi-naked people (usually women) to grab the media's attention and make (or be) the headlines. Their strategy has been spectacularly successful and the media does not seem to tire of a naked PETA protest.    

The abundance of online photos of naked PETA protests suggests that the organisation has no problem finding people willing to strip in the name of animal rights. Indeed, in scrolling through images for this post I saw numerous photos of people I have personally met, posing nude for PETA. I can only assume that those people do not think that the use of sex to sell an animal rights message is an ethical concern. Indeed, of the people I know who have stripped for PETA I am not aware of any of them feeling pressured, coerced or exploited in the process. 


But has PETA taken it to another level?


Regular readers of this blog will recall that earlier this year PETA produced an online ad which suggested that a young woman had sustained serious injuries after her boyfriend went vegan and therefore became more forceful in bed. As you might expect, the ad caused quite a stir.


More recently PETA launched a new xxx website which features a photos of two young, apparently naked, women embracing. At first blush it appears to be a porn site. 


The site includes a statement under the heading 'The Reason Behind PETA's Naked Campaigns' which reads in part:


PETA's mission is to put an end to animal suffering, and we use every available opportunity to spread this message—we always have, and we always will. Unfortunately, this is not always an easy task. Unlike our opposition, which is mostly made up of wealthy industries and corporations, PETA must rely on getting free "advertising" through media coverage. It's a safe bet that many visitors to PETA.xxx didn't set out to learn about how animals are mercilessly slaughtered on today's factory farms; understandably, such topics are convenient to ignore. That's why PETA must make our message impossible to forget—and launching a website with a .xxx domain name is one way that we can achieve that goal.


In PETA's view sex is fair game because the suffering of animals is so serious, and their adversaries so powerful, that they must harness the free advertising that comes with sexual images.They do so for the sake of the animals. 


So what's my view?


Well, I can see both sides of the argument. I appreciate that the sexualisation of women's bodies for the purpose of marketing is morally problematic. I also continue to be impressed with the effectiveness with which PETA disseminates its message. In a world where animal suffering is almost always invisible, their contribution is arguably important. 


But do the ends justify the means? Well to learn what I really, really, really think about the issue you will have to come to the Las Vegan Bakery discussion group.


However, what I will tell you now is that I will be watching the number of hits this post receives very closely. I have tagged it with the word 'sex'. What's the bet that this post will receive more page views than any other? Sex sells, but should animal advocates fight them or join them?