Academic journal accuses Israel of 'vegan-washing"

In the latest Journal of Intercultural Studies, there is an article by Esther Alloun called "Veganwashing Israel’s Dirty Laundry? Animal Politics and Nationalism in Palestine-Israel."

Predictably, the article accuses Israel is using vegan-friendly policies to distract from, yes, its "occupation."

The abstract:

In popular media and public discourse, Israel has been referred to as ‘the first vegan nation’ and the ‘global centre for veganism’ because of the mainstreaming of veganism in the country in the 2010s. The article examines this triumphalist rhetoric and argues that animal welfare and veganism have been enrolled as a device to narrate the Israeli nation within terms of Jewish Israeli sovereignty. The contemporary cultural politics of veganism in Israel circulate and reinforce national myths of exceptionalism tethered to a Zionist exclusionary ideology, including claims to unique victimhood, pioneering achievements and moral rectitude, which further entrench Jewish Israeli belonging and Palestinian unbelonging. Indeed, Israeli institutions have co-opted an image of ‘vegan/animal-friendliness’ as makers of the nation’s modernity and morality. Yet, drawing on fieldwork with Jewish Israeli activists, the paper argues that both the deliberate practices of veganwashing and its well-intentioned critiques overlook the nuances and ambivalences of Israeli animal politics. The paper also highlights that critiques of veganwashing do not go far enough to show how it is negotiated by Palestinian animal advocates. It suggests that focus on veganwashing as the primary debate of settler-colonial injustice and animal politics has paradoxically rendered them inaudible, and calls instead for a politics of listening.

Parts of the paper are unintentionally funny.

Activists have rightly pointed out that Israeli veganwashing generates much violence through its deflection and obscuring of settler colonial oppression.

Talking about Israeli leadership in veganism generates much violence?

The paper laments that any discussion of veganwashing has the same practical effect as veganwashing itself:

Debating veganwashing can (unwittingly) serve as a politics of deflection itself by drawing attention away from the actual settler colonial politics of the Israeli State and Palestinians’ resistance to it.

Perhaps an entirely new field can be founded, of X-washing-washing, where debate about how Israel tries to deflect from its awful crimes is actually a deflection from discussing Israel's awful crimes. Maybe even Alloun herself is a Zionist shill for increasing the debate about X-washing and deflecting from writing yet another article about how Israel is more directly evil.

The absurdities continue. The author interviewed some new Israeli Jewish vegans who stupidly compared animal cruelty to the Holocaust. Based on these anecdotes, Alloun concludes:

Mainstream Israeli culture tends to not only essentialise Jewish victimhood and innocence, crystallised through events like the Holocaust and as a core part of Israeli Jewish identity, but also to deny that other humans can be victim (Pappé 2010). This is crucial to understand the broader implications of activists folding animals into national (Jewish) victimhood and political innocence.

Using Ilan Pappe's fictional thesis that Zionist deny any other human suffering besides Jews, Alloun makes up a further theory that Jews will include animals as fellow victims, based on interviewing two idiots. Somehow, I doubt that Yad Vashem would agree.

There is a telling anecdote as Alloun talks with members of the Palestinian Animal League, the only Palestinian animal rights group in the West Bank.

Sudfeh, PAL’s vegan cafeteria (and main vegan initiative) in Abu Dhis (West Bank) which had got a lot of press and sent a clear signal that Israel did not have a monopoly over veganism, had closed because of a lack of business. Speaking to PAL volunteers and its core team at the conference, it also became apparent that veganism was neither the centrepiece nor a top priority of PAL’s animal advocacy. Conference tours of Bethlehem, Ramallah and Jalazon prompted an international attendee to remark that she had not yet seen the Palestinian vegan movement she had expected and come to the West Bank to witness (fieldnotes). There is no beating Israel at the game of the vegan nation.

The paper goes on to note that PAL is really an anti-Israel initiative where the welfare of animals is only secondary, and decries that white Westerners think of it as a normal Western-style animal rights group.

PAL rejects patronising and neocolonial interventions by well-intentioned international animal NGOs (see Safi 2017b) and proposes a unique form of animal politics with Palestinian national liberation as its guiding principle. In the context of a literal war zone, PAL’s platform envisages a decolonial and decolonised politics of animal liberation as an integral part of Palestinian self-determination. It therefore puts the Palestinian struggle for justice, and boycott of the Israeli State at the centre of its activist engagement.

In short, there is really no Palestinian animal rights group and there is not a single vegan restaurant in the territories. The one and only animal rights NGO uses animal rights as another tool to generate hatred against Israel - much like this academic paper does.

In the end, these sorts of papers which are increasingly being published without any fact checks or objective editing are part of a huge anti-Israel push in academia. Cutting out the pseudo-academic language, the "laundry" literature all has in common a thesis that Israelis do not have the right to have any pride in their people or their state. Israeli pride is simply a subterfuge for covering crimes against Palestinians, which is the only valid discourse about Israel that is allowed. Any other discussion must be silenced by accusing it of being a means to divert attention from what they believe is the real topic. It is psychological projection: it is not Israel that is so obsessed with Palestinians that they embrace liberal causes to distract the world from them, but these pseudo-academics are the ones who cannot look at Israel with anything but their occupation goggles.

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"Vegan-washing" and the fanaticism of the far-Left

+972 has an unintentionally hypocritical article about tensions within Israel's vegan community.

A fanatic animal-rights activist named Gary Yourofsky is planning to speak about his passion in Ariel, which is of course in the "territories." +972 finds this hard to believe, because it is such a left-wing topic; how could he even think about speaking in a city that is deemed illegal by the international community?

His answer shocked the +972-niks:

“Since the ‘international community’ is comprised of violent, bloodthirsty thugs who terrorize billions of innocent animals every second of every minute of every hour of every day, the ‘international community’ can go to HELL,” he wrote back.

Responding to the core question of the Palestinian struggle and the call to boycott Israeli academia and the settlements, Yourofsky said he sees no point in caring about any human beings so long as animals that are being regularly slaughtered. “When people start eating sliced up Jew flesh, or seared Palestinian children in between two slices of bread with onions, pickles and mustard, then I’ll be concerned about the Middle East situation.”

The +972 author, Haggai Matar, tries to wrap his head around such thinking, and finally gets an answer. Another animal rights activist explains that Yourofsky is a "single issue activist" who is focused on animal rights above all. He is, simply, a fanatic. Some people can be so obsessed with a single topic that they can be understood, even if their resulting actions are unforgivable.

Matar then quotes far left anti-Zionist Aeyal Gross, in Haaretz (Hebrew), where he notes that recently Bibi Netanyahu made statements supporting animal rights during a cabinet meeting. It wasn't a policy statement, it wasn't a public speech, it was just a conversation during a meeting.

Gross is incensed at how such a disgusting person as Netanyahu could possibly advocate a liberal position on anything. It is like Gross, a "part vegetarian part vegan," is sickened that he could have anything in common with the prime minister of Israel.

So Aeyal Gross, who had previously railed against Israel's officially gay-friendly public stance, called this "vegan-washing" as a successor to the ridiculous term "pinkwashing."

What Haggai Matar is completely blind to is that while he is condescending towards single-issue activists for animal rights, he doesn't realize that his article, +972 magazine and his entire far-Left community is focused on a single issue as well: the  evil of Israel, especially the"occupation."

To these fanatics - and they are no less fanatic than Gary Yourofsky - there is only one issue, Israel's supposedly horrible treatment of non-Jews. When they hear about Yourofsky speaking in Ariel, the first question they ask is "what about the occupation?" When they hear that a politician they don't like advocates a liberal position, they ask "what about the occupation?" When they see Israel sending aid to Haiti or the Phillipines, they ask "what about the occupation?"

To these far Left fanatics, the "occupation" and the fact of Israel's unique evil trumps all else. They see everything Israel does, whether it is a music festival or archaeology or scientific achievements or medical breakthroughs, as simply either proof of oppressing Palestinian Arabs or a scheme to distract the world from Israel's oppression of Palestinian Arabs. The only thing good about Israel, to these haters, is that there are so many people there that loathe Israel.

Like Yourofsky, they simply cannot hold two ideas in their heads at once. Because, to fanatics, the world can only be divided into those who see the world exactly their way and those who don't. There is no grey, no middle ground, nothing even orthogonal to their pet topic. Nothing else exists.

That's pretty much the definition of "fanatic."

(See also here and here for previous examples of this obsession among the anti-Zionist Israelis.)

(h/t Ruchie)

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50 years ago, before "occupation," Israel engaged in "X-washing"

We have ridiculed the concept, that has gained currency in recent years, that every humanitarian thing Israel does is really meant to hide its many crimes of "occupation."

I guess when Israel helped out other nations before 1967, they were engaging in pre-emptive "X-washing".

October 9, 1963 - Germwashing:

An El Al Boeing airliner left Israel today bearing a shipment of antibiotics as an Israeli contribution to the victims of Hurricane Flora in the Caribbean area.

October 15 - Agri-washing:

Two new farming villages will be set up in the Central African Republic with Israel aid in line with a decision arrived at in talks between Agriculture Minister Moshe Dayan and President David Dacko at Bangui, Ministry officials reported today.

Israeli officials now touring the Central African Republic were told that at one of the cooperative villages established with Israel aid, crop output increased by 700 per cent over the local average.

October 25 - Irrigation-washing:

MEXICO CITY - Thirty-three Mexicans, including six irrigation experts and 27 young farmers, left for Israel today to begin special training courses.

The experts were chosen by the Ministry of Agriculture for training in Israel that would aid them in improving the Ministry’s agricultural projects in this country. The 27 farmers, going to Israel under the Israeli Government’s auspices, with the joint sponsorship of the Organization of American States, will spend three months studying agronomy in Israel.

In 1963, Israel hardly had the powerhouse economy it enjoys today. But even when it was a mere 15 years old, Israel would go out of its way to help other countries in need.

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Earthquake-washing - in 1953

You know how Israel-haters claim that anything humanitarian that Israel ever does does not reflect the true attitude of Israelis, but are only meant to cover over their supposed crimes?

I'd love to hear how they explain this:

In August 1953, Israel had just concluded celebrations of the country's fifth anniversary. The festivities weren't joyful: An economic recession and military threats were causing no end of anxiety to the country's leadership. The country was also preoccupied with the task of absorbing waves of immigrants, who had come from Arab lands and post-Holocaust Europe. Israel's international position was also precarious: On the one hand many countries had recognized the newly founded state, but on the other hand their leaders refrained from paying official visits because of the Arab boycott. A number of European countries had not yet recognized Israel, among them Germany, Austria, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, and Greece.

The Israeli Navy was in the process of building its force, having at its disposal only a small number of old frigate-class warships, which had been renovated and put into service, along with a mixed assemblage of young soldiers lacking experience or naval training. On Aug. 12, 1953 the navy flotilla was on its way back to Israeli shores, after four weeks of intense training in the Aegean Sea, aimed at creating a professional naval force. Suddenly S.O.S alerts were sounded off the Greek shores: A series of deadly earthquakes, measuring 7.3 on the Richter scale, had struck the area of the Greek islands, Kefalonia, Zante, and Ithaca. The commander of the Israeli flotilla reported back to naval headquarters in Haifa and requested permission to turn back and offer aid. The Israeli response was immediate: "Enter and provide assistance."

The Israeli fleet, 15 hours away from the site of the disaster, doubled back and sailed past the American and British fleets, which could not access the areas on the islands that had been hit, due to the immense size of their warships.

In his blog "Seven days - notes from the Great Blue", Yiftah Kozik vividly describes the sights encountered by the Israeli naval personnel arriving at the devastated islands:

"huge clods of earth were falling into the water at tremendous speeds, the summit of Mount Ainos on the island of Kefalonia looks as though it were split in two, pillars of smoke rising from cracks could be seen throughout the town, and fierce fires had broken out in the olive oils storerooms and were burning all that remained...in most of the island's village not a building remained standing, and thousands were wounded in critical condition, among them pregnant women, old and young, people with amputated and crushed limbs, and all were in need of immediate help....the casualty clearing station was located on a wharf of the island's central port, the flotilla's senior physician, Dr. Ashkenazi, along with his younger colleague, Dr. Seelenfreud, were in charge of medical treatment, distributing the limited medical resources, and performing triage. The Israeli teams performed emergency surgeries: a broken pelvis, skull fractures, premature births, complex fractures, hemorrhages, panic attacks, despair, and havoc everywhere..."

According to the Law of the Sea of that time, the first rescue force to arrive on the scene takes command of the operation, and since the Israeli navy was the first to land on the shores of Kefalonia it took charge and also directed the rescue operations of the American and British fleets. For three days and nights the 450 Israeli naval men struggled side by side with the Americans and the British to provide relief to the residents of the Greek islands, saving hundreds from a sure death, transporting 400 seriously wounded casualties to the mainland, and providing medical assistance to 16,000 local residents. Although at the time the Greek government had not yet recognized the state of Israel, and official recognition would arrive only 37 years later, the Greek people expressed their gratitude. The king of Greece came personally to greet the Navy soldiers to convey a message of thanks to David Ben Gurion, Israel's Prime Minister, and to award badges of merit to the commanders of the operation, Shlomo Harel and Yizhak Dviri. In an act of appreciation for the Israeli navy, the Greek press called it "the fleet of love and hope," and "the Israeli sailors of salvation."

As the Israeli fleet departed from the Kefalonia bay to make its way back to Israeli shores, the other ships that took part in the rescue operations sounded their horns in a prolonged cheer, in a spontaneous show of professional homage.

Obviously, the Israelis were trying to whitewash the future "occupation."

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Sarah Schulman of "pinkwashing" fame is a paranoid fraud

Remember Sarah Schulman, who wrote one of the most bizarre op-eds in NYT history in her crazed attempt to say that anything Israel does that is gay-friendly is really to whitewash its alleged crimes,  and whose hate for Israel makes it impossible for her to say a bad word about the undeniably homophobic terror group Hamas?

Well, she organized a conference on "Homonationalism and Pinkwashing" at CUNY earlier this year. I pointed out some of the nuttier parts of the conference description, but it turns out that Schulman's hate for Israel caused her to disallow anyone to speak at - or even attend! - the conference unless their hate for the Jewish state was as pure as hers is.

James Kirchick in Tablet describes how Schulman rejected numerous papers at the conference, even papers critical of Israel, if they did not toe her line that the only possible reason for Israel's being friendly to gays is to pursue its agenda of crushing Palestinian Arabs.

Beyond that, when one man proposed a paper saying that Israel's support of gays was meant to help tourism rather than provide cove for genocide, Schulman not only angrily rejected the paper but publicly accused him of being an "Israeli operative:"

But the most revealing of Schulman’s interactions was with Jayson Littman, a New York-based organizer of social events for gay Jewish men who has led gay-themed Birthright trips to Israel. Last spring, Littman sent a proposal titled “The Myth of Pinkwashing,” which, along the line of Jonathan Miller’s, explained that the Israeli government’s advertising its gay life is primarily about tourism dollars, not propaganda. Schulman sent him a similar response to the ones she fired off to the other three individuals described above. Littman’s dedication to connecting gay Jews with Zionism, however, appears to have made him a prominent target of Schulman’s florid campaign to portray any and all mention of gay life in Israel as part of a dark Israeli government-controlled conspiracy to oppress Palestinians.

In a November 2012 interview with the British lesbian magazine Diva, Schulman said that “the more I work in this arena, the more aware I become of the involvement of the Israeli government in the US LGBT community.” She named Littman, among others, as “Israeli government operatives … who work for the Foreign Ministry, whose job it is to work our community along pinkwashing lines.” Among their tasks, she said, are to “plant stories in newspapers, co-opt our events … and flood websites with propaganda.”

Littman, of course, is nothing of the sort.

Kirchick also reveals this little tidbit:

Schulman’s behavior—accusing someone (by all accounts falsely) of being a spy for a foreign government and then compiling a dossier full of inaccurate “evidence” when challenged on the veracity of her claim—is the work of an activist, or of a secret policeman in the old Soviet-bloc states, not a scholar. Indeed, despite having the title of “Distinguished Professor” at CUNY, Schulman has no degree higher than a Bachelor’s from Empire State College.

Empire State College is known for its distance learning program; meaning that her degree is pretty much a mail order  bachelor's degree, from a little known albeit accredited institution. CUNY hiring someone with those credentials as a "Distinguished Professor" makes one wonder about CUNY altogether.

Kirchick concludes with the undeniable:

In her opening speech, Schulman dropped any pretense of being anything other than an ideologue. Noting that some critics of her conference had suggested she invite “a keynote speaker from the other side,” she responded, “Like there’s two sides!” By offering a veneer of academic respectability to Sarah Schulman and her acolytes, CUNY has provided legitimacy to agitprop posing as scholarship.

FrontPage had a nice review of the entire joke of a conference.

(h/t Gidon)

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4 more Pals killed in Syria - but by mentioning it I'm engaging in "Assad-washing"

Palestine Today reports four more Palestinian Arabs killed in Syria in the past couple of days.

But don't expect to find anything about this in the "pro-Palestinian" Electronic Intifada site.

In fact, if I dare to mention Palestinian Arabs being killed in Syria, I'm engaging in a horrible crime myself. One that the human rights defenders in EI call "Assad-washing."

Really!

Already last April, they were getting nervous that the tens of thousands being killed in Syria were taking world attention away from the Palestinian Arabs who are living in comparative safety. So Electronic Intifada wrote an op-ed saying that evil Zionists are using massacres in Syria to divert the world's attention from Palestinian Arabs in the territories getting what are, in comparison, papercuts.

The Israeli government and its supporters have long utilized a wide range of propaganda tools to sugarcoat Israel’s atrocities against the Palestinians. In addition to pinkwashing (using Israel’s relative support of gay rights to sugarcoat the country’s apartheid nature) and greenwashing (perpetuating the perception that Israel has environmentally-friendly policies to do the same), Zionist advocates are now using a different method: Assadwashing.

So this is how the liberals at EI justify their relative silence when Palestinian Arabs - whom they pretend to love so much - are being slaughtered.

They don't want to be Assadwashers!

Keep in mind that since the Syrian revolution began, far more Palestinian Arabs have been killed in Syria than in Gaza and the West Bank combined. But keep that under your hat, because even mentioning Palestinian Arabs being killed by Syria is evidently a strict taboo among the "pro-Palestinian" crowd.

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Clown-washing

From the US Embassy in Israel:

The Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem was smiling and laughing as a colorful group of clowns, led by "Nurse Nice" (aka Hilary Chaplain), a medical clown from New York, walked through the corridors of the Pediatric Ward and entertained sick children in the dialysis room. With her visit supported by the U.S. Embassy, Tel Aviv, Hilary gave several workshops to Israeli medical clowns and worked with the "Dream Doctor," the largest medical clowns' organization in the country, to apply new methods taught at the workshop. Ambassador Daniel Shapiro was the guest of honor at this special event and took an active role by talking to the children and dancing with the clowns. As one mother put it after seeing a real smile on her sick daughter's face: "It's about time she started laughing after such a long period of tears ..."

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