(Posted January 21, 2016) Esti Goldman of Israel just sent something to me that I had to share with everyone.
“The previous (Israel) Independence day, vegan activists showed up to the BBQ area where all the families were. They brought the dead bodies of cats and made a huge provocative show.
Back then, I used to be a carnist. When I saw what they were doing, I was outraged and thought, with all due respect to their opinions, what gives them the right to come here and destroy family meals. Then my grandpa, a 91-year-old Holocaust survivor, said something I will never forget: ‘They are simply defending caged, tortured creatures who are being sent to a brutal mass murder. I wish someone would’ve stood up like that, and defended my family 70 years ago! Instead, everyone preferred to ignore it and pretend that they didn't know what was happening.’
That same day was the day I opened my eyes. My grandpa is vegetarian only. Unfortunately, he never knew about all the pain and suffering that comes along with dairy and eggs. Now, sadly, he is not clear-minded enough to explain this to him. But his words changed my life. Actually, the day after this was the day I saw your lecture on YouTube, and got all the answers I needed. Thank you so much for helping me make the final decision. By the way, when I visit him, I always cook him vegan food only.”
NOTE FROM ME: I cannot take credit for Esti acting on the recognition as her grandpa was the influential one who employed infallible logic. If you want to read some amazing conversion emails I’ve received over the years, check out the COMMENTS/ACCOLADES section on the main page of my adaptt.org site. Just so ya know, I am quite sure you could finish reading WAR AND PEACE before reading this entire section.
BTW, if anyone thinks the dead cat demo was too harsh or unproductive, just remember that Esti stopped exploiting other animals because of it!
And here are the 6th-11th paragraphs from my ETHICS essay where I compare the Animal Holocaust and the Jewish one:
Isaac Bashevis Singer, the compassionate Jewish humanitarian who escaped Nazi-occupied Poland, once condemned every animal-exploiter by stating, "What do they know—all these scholars, all these philosophers, all the leaders of the world? They have convinced themselves that man, the worst transgressor of all the species, is the crown of creation. All other creatures were created merely to provide him with food, pelts, to be tormented, exterminated. In relation to them [animals], all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka."
Singer's indictment is probably the most damning statement ever about humankind. It establishes the fact that violence is violence and murder is murder even if the victims have beaks, horns, gills, feathers or fur.
In the last 12 months alone, tens of billions of animals worldwide were enslaved, murdered, dismembered or tortured by the food and clothing industries, by vivisectors and hunters, and by their captors in rodeos, circuses, and zoos, making the Animal Holocaust the largest Holocaust of all time. It is also the longest-running Holocaust of all time because animals were the first victims of slavery, oppression and murder. Humans perfected these psychotic techniques on animals before using them on each other. The fact that Heinrich Himmler, the Gestapo Commander who created the Jewish Holocaust's gas chamber system, was a mass murderer of chickens before orchestrating the mass murder of humans (yes, he was a chicken farmer/killer), makes the aforesaid point impossible to impugn. For anyone offended by the word “Holocaust” to describe what animals are going through, check out Leviticus 1:1-10 to see which victims truly own the word.
When Nazis rounded up Jews, babies were ripped out of their mothers' arms. In the dairy industry, calves are stolen from their mothers after birth. Other animal mothers, such as sows, rabbits and ewes, have their babies taken within days, weeks or months after birth. Separating families is a psychologically devastating tactic used to weaken one's pride and inhibit their desire to retaliate and fight back. Nazis swiped this technique from the meat, dairy and egg industries. Jews were tattooed to mark them. All animals in the meat and dairy industries are branded with hot irons, or ear-notched with a numerical tag. Jews were sent to the concentration camps in the same extermination trucks that still send animals to slaughterhouses. The Nazis constructed human slaughterhouses to massacre millions, while these torture-buildings have been strategically built all over the planet to massacre billions of animals. Jews have been, while animals still are, treated like nothing, as if their lives don't matter.
You can also compare the two Holocausts this way. Go to the nearest cow or pig slaughterhouse and remove the animals and replace them with humans. You have now re-created Birkenau. If you travel back in time and remove the Jews from Birkenau and replace them with cows or pigs, a Holocaust is still taking place. During my 2012-13 lectures in Israel, after showing a new slaughterhouse video, I asked thousands of people the following: "How come if the animals in that video were dogs or cats, you'd be outraged? If they were kids, you'd be screaming bloody murder! Instead the victims are cows and chickens and fish and all of a sudden no one cares, it's okay? So I'm a little confused here. Is the slaughterhouse a problem? Or is the problem who's getting killed in the slaughterhouse? It's a HOUSE OF SLAUGHTER. Why does it even exist? Especially in a country that loves to say, 'NEVER AGAIN. IT'LL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN.' I got some news for ya. The Animal Holocaust was happening long before the Jewish Holocaust, during the Jewish Holocaust and it's still happening today. It's time for Israel to become the first nation on this planet to abolish concentration camps once and for all."
The global atrocity of eating animals murders more innocent beings in one year than all human atrocities combined! This makes veganism the most important aspect of animal liberation because almost every animal who is abused and murdered on this planet is abused and murdered by the meat, dairy, egg and honey industries, despite the fact that humans have no right to commodify animal bodies and turn them into sandwiches and shoes! Even people residing in icy or desert settings have NO justification to murder animals because their lives are NOT more important than animal lives! Besides fleas and ticks, humans possess the dubious distinction of being the only expendable creatures on this planet. We bring nothing positive to the table as we are destroyers, attackers and takers. Our extinction would benefit the air, the water, the forests and the animals. And all the excuses people use for exploiting animals – especially habit, convenience, taste, tradition and profit – are invalid, vacuous and barbaric reasons for causing intentional harm to them.