ISRAEL – The Anonymous for Animal Rights Interview with Yossi Wolfson.

Interview by Claudette Vaughan

Animal activist, Yossi Wolfson, from Anonymous for Animal Rights
spoke to the Abolitionist about what happened to the animals during the recent war between Israel and Lebanon, on vivisection, zoos, veganism and basically all things animal orientated in Israel. The pics of Yossi are from his drag show, "The Mice and Lea Goldberg Horror Show".

Here’s what he had to say.

Abolitionist: What became of all the animals during the war with Beirut, Yossi?

Yossi: I have no words to describe how unbelievably devastating war is. The madness and indifference to suffering of people who engage in it is beyond my
understanding. And as always, innocent animals are the main victims. The
last war between Israel and Hizb-Alla is just an example. Wild animals
suffered the most. Israel's attack on civilian oil facilities in Lebanon caused
an oil spillage that polluted the coasts of Lebanon and part of the coast of
Syria. This ecological disaster killed endless numbers of sea animals and
destroyed their habitat. On land, the intensive bombings by Israel and the
Hizb-Alla rockets caused huge fires in Lebanon and in northern Israel, with
many animals burnt to death. Others escaped - but have small chances to
survive due to the loss of natural resources, food sources and living areas.
Animals in farms, who are totally dependant on humans and on mechanical
systems, suffered just as well. Many were left without food or water.
Chickens in the meat industry were not sent to slaughter and died slowly in
their sheds: Their bodies, artificially distorted to grow fast, were their
enemies. Many animals living in people's homes found during the war, that
they are not a genuine part of the family. Some of them were left behind,
locked in apartments, without enough food and water. Some were just thrown
to the streets. Volunteers, who risked their lives going north, worked
tirelessly to locate guardians, get keys to apartments where animals were
trapped, and rescue such animals or just feed abandoned animals and feral
cats whose feeders left to safer places. Those people who stayed with their
animals had difficult time getting food for them, and here again animal
protection organizations had to improvise solutions.

Death, starvation and injuries do not sum the suffering caused to animals by
the war. I haven't yet mentioned the terror caused by the noise of falling
bombs. Neither did the suffering end at the time of cease fire: Many
abandoned animals haven't found homes. The cleaning of oil from the Lebanese
coast is only starting. It will take years for the burnt forests to grow
again. And an estimated number of a million small bombs, that were scattered
by Israeli cluster bombs and did not explode, are still awaiting their
victims.

And the worst of all is that people do not learn - and are already preparing
for the next war.

Abolitionist: How much vivisection is being conducted in Israel today?

Yossi: This is a good question indeed: Just to get such information
anti-vivisection organisations in Israel are repeatedly going to the Courts.
And though the courts have ruled that the authorities should collect and
keep this data, most of it is still not available. The latest official
figures that exist are of the number of animals used in experiments in 2004:
Almost 320,000. On top of these one should add more than 20,000 animals
experimented on in the armed forces and security system. These official
figures do not reveal the whole picture: Israel's State Comptroller found,
in a report published in 2004, that reports of establishments performing
vivisection (reports on which this data is based) were only partial.

Abolitionist: Where and is it being opposed? Yossi: The Israeli Society for the Abolition of Vivisection was founded in 1983 and is the first animal rights organisation in Israel that abandoned the old fashioned style of SPCAs. This group's campaign changed public opinion dramatically through the years. If in the past the public was totally ignorant on the issue, now it has become the primary example of animal abuse. However, the numbers of animals being experimented on seem to only rise, and vivisectionist propaganda is rising as well

Yossi from The Mice and Lea Goldberg Horror Show.

Their most frightening success, I think, is that the standard way the issue is now
presented is as an "unsolvable moral dilemma" stripped of the social and
economic context; an opportunity for time-passing philosophizing, playing
with unreal scenarios of a-dog-and-a-child-in-a-life-boat, with no need to
get to any concrete resolution. This gives people an easy excuse to shut
their eyes to the reality of vivisection and not to take sides.

But still, opposition to vivisection is huge. There is a lot of campaigning
going on, trying to educate the public and raise awareness.

You can see the success of such past efforts when people who became
abolitionists in their youth become students and object to animal
experiments in the university. Usually this is solved through negotiations
after the university sees the number of objectors. But one case in Haifa had
to be taken to the Court, resulting in the establishment of a "Conscious
Committee" in the university to check requests of students conscientiously
objecting to vivisection.

Other major campaigns are to close a breeding facility for monkeys in a
place called Mazor; a campaign against a new institute for brain research in the Bar Ilan university, legal efforts to increase transparency and lobbying
efforts to slightly change the authorization mechanisms for animal
experiments in a way that will increase public involvement.

Abolitionist: What type of experiments are being conducted and is there any genetic engineering and cloning being conducted in Israel labs today? Also what animals are being used in animal experimentation in Israel?

Yossi: Israel is boasting of being scientifically progressive, yet it still pursues
the most barbaric practices of vivisection. You can find here everything you
would find in any "modern" Western country - from toxicity tests to genetic
engineering to the most absurd "basic science" stuff. Vivisection is
conducted in academic institutions, to fuel careers and publications, in
hospitals, to give the doctors some relief from serious medical work, in
commercial corporations and in the military. Fortunately it was stopped in
schools about 10 years ago, by then Minister of Education Yossi Sarid, after
an intensive campaign.

Which species of animals will you find in Israeli labs? According to the
Israeli Board for Animal Experiments (a governmental body which supposedly
monitors vivisection but is fully controlled by the vivisection industry) you
will find there mice, rats, rabbits, cats, dogs, hamsters, guinea-pigs,
monkeys, cows, sheep, horses, snakes, donkeys and big numbers of the less
specified categories of birds, fish and amphibians. Kibutz Lahav, in the
south of Israel, makes profits by abusing pigs: It raises pigs for meat in
industrial conditions (including sow stalls), and has a laboratory next
door, that conducts experiments on pigs as a contractor for paying
customers. The law does not apply to invertebrates, so they are not even
counted.

Research published by scientists working there, suggest that the institute deals with highly contiguous diseases that can be related to biological weapons.

A big section of vivisection involves developing more efficient methods to
exploit animals in farms. During the campaign against force feeding of geese
and ducks, the Ministry of Agriculture conducted a number of such
experiments in geese, trying to compare different force-feeding methods and
regimes. The experiments' results were of no significance, but more
suffering was caused. One experiment had to be stopped in the middle because
"too many geese had been lost" and in another the vivisectors mentioned that
the esophagus of some geese exploded "because of mistakes in handling the
force feeding machine".

And just a last example in this march of evils: Hagai Bergman, a vivisector
from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and one of the strongest proponents
of vivisection in Israel. This person built his career on experiments on
monkeys in which he demonstrated a surgical treatment for Parkinson's Disease.
However, this procedure has been known and used on humans many years before
Bergman...

Abolitionist: How is the campaign against pate foie gras coming along?

Yossi: This campaign can eventually be listed as a success - not only in court but
in practice. Virtually all force-feeding facilities for geese shut down in
mid-April and the one facility force-feeding ducks shut down by the end of
July. There are still suspicions that few facilities continue to force feed
secretly behind high fences - and Anonymous continues to monitor the
situation.

The court decision banning force feeding is repeatedly cited as one of the
most praised decisions of the court. Also the awareness raised by the
campaign is still felt very much. Hopefully, these positive tendencies will
help future campaigns.

Abolitionist: What other animal rights campaigns are currently happening in Israel?

Yossi: The most important campaign is and will always be, in my opinion, the
campaign to promote vegetarian and vegan diets. Luckily, this is also one of
the strongest campaigns in Israel today. It has the highest profile in the
material produced by Anonymous for Animal Rights. It is the main issue in
the vigils, stalls and website of Animal Liberation Israel. It is the
subject of creative fliers and buttons distributed by One Struggle - a group
emphasizing the connection between human rights and other animals' rights.
It is the light-motif in animal TV - an animal rights TV program and
video-website. It is promoted by the Vegi-Bar in central Tel-Aviv, a
cooperative that offers cheap and delicious vegetarian meals in a friendly
atmosphere dominated by animal rights posters and leaflets. (The Vegi-Bar is
adjacent to Salon Mazal - an infoshop dedicated to social justice and
peace).

Another campaign that might be of interest to Australians is to stop the new
(but growing) horse racing industry in Israel. The main efforts are to
prevent the authorization of gambling over such races - an authorization
that might give this cruel industry a huge economic push.

Abolitionist: How much pressure is brought to bear on animal researchers in Israel?

Yossi: Of course, vivisectors always complain about being victims of harassment and threats. In reality, such actions are quite rare. There were a few times that
slogans were written on vivisectors' cars or homes, and I would not argue
that all the phone calls they get are absolutely polite. I am not sure that
such actions are constructive: They give the vivisection industry a tool to
shift the discussion from the real issues. They do not cause real economic
damage to the industry. People who are deeply involved in vivisection will
not change their ways because of such actions, and people who are only
marginal collaborators do not deserve it and may be persuaded by other
means. Intimidation is also a non-viable method, relative to persuasion or
to economic pressure. Sometimes I feel that it is an outlet for our
aggression and frustration more then a calculated action.

However, I believe that such actions are really not what bothers these
vivisectors. What really bothers them is being exposed publicly, in their
names. They are used to doing their dirty work behind closed doors. They travel
the world with their colleagues moving from expensive hotels to prestigious
conventions. They talk about their crimes inside their closed circles, using
codes that "lay people" will not understand. It is not so easy for such
people to find descriptions of their deeds in regular newspapers; to
hear their name shouted by demonstrators at a ceremony where they are
granted some prize or another; to become synonymous to the devil in the
public sphere. I hope that it makes it difficult for them with their friends
and relatives. They cannot deny the truth - so they attack freedom of speech
claiming that it provokes these almost nonexistent "threats" and "acts of
violence".

Abolitionist: Israel has a SHAC organisation Yossi. Do you know
anything about this and how active are they?

Yossi: Well, first of all there is genuine SHAC activity in Israel - as part of the
worldwide campaign against HLS. Major HLS clients in Israel are TEVA and
Machteshim.

However, more interesting is the SHAC-inspired campaign to prevent the
opening of a vivisection lab in the Tel-Aviv College. The lab is going to be
dedicated to "psychoneuroimmunology". This bombastic title refers to the
connection between one's psychology, the immune-system and the nerves
systems. More specifically, it will be the site of experiments such as this
published one, conducted by Ronit Avitur, one of the vivisectors who will
use the lab: In this experiment baby-mice were repeatedly separated from
their mothers to cause them stress. As adults they were infected with a
virus, while the vivisectors watched and measured how they surrender to the
disease. The idea was to find out (how surprising!!) that early-age stress
made these beings more sensitive to infection.

In fact, one of the College's arguments to defend itself is that the lab
will only use mice and rats. Doesn't work with me. I had the opportunity to
follow some rats, refugees from a laboratory, in the process of
rehabilitation. In their first days outside they acted like those frightened
caged creatures - passively bundling together in the corner of a box. But
gradually they discovered their potential to live rich and happy lives. They
started showing curiosity, exploring their environment, moving their tiny
heads like small radars before running from shelter to shelter, checking new
foods, digging holes in melons and eating them from inside, climbing,
jumping, smelling... They built huge nests to give birth in. And friendly
they always stayed: I came to appreciate this only when I once put my hand
too close to a nest with baby rats. Immediately I found out how deep and
painful a bite from a protective mother-rat can be - and (with this biting
ability in mind) how tolerant their usual behaviour was.

But back to the Tel Aviv College. A group named Sogrot ("closing") put as
their objective to prevent the opening of the vivisection lab. Their actions
include demonstrations in front of the college and sit-ins in the college's
offices; taking the stage in events organised by it (in one event, after the
activists were dragged out by security personal, voices of animals from a
tape hidden in the auditorium continued to bear the message); asking the
public to send faxes and make phone calls to the college and related people;
recruiting students (most of whom are not connected to the lab and are
opposed to animal abuse) and more.

One of the important tools used by Sogrot was vigils in front of the homes
of the College's president and directors. As a response, the College hired
one of the top legal firms in Israel to sue the activists in court. The
college is asking for an injunction prohibiting vigils near the homes of the
college's functionaries. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel is
representing the activists. A decision on the case itself is yet to come,
but in the meanwhile, in a very peculiar procedure, the court issued what
amounts to be a temporary injunction against these vigils. The college, that
has connections in the right places, also put pressure on the police to
crash the group. The police treated the case more seriously than they treat
dangerous crimes. A number of activists were interrogated as suspects of
participating in "illegal demonstrations" and doing graffiti on a car and a
wall. To intimidate the activists, the police did not just interrogate them:
night visits were done, arrest warrants issued, computers ceased...

The campaign, however, continues. Several complaints against the police are
pending, and the legal action against the group was an opportunity to bring
the campaign to the media - with negative publication for the college.

Just in case anyone would like to get the College's comments on their
planned torturous lab, their fax number is +972-3-6802526; the phone
+972-3-6802525 and the e-mail bev@mta.ac.il.

Abolitionist: How prevalent is veganism in Israel?

Yossi: I don't know of any statistics on that, but according to a comprehensive
survey on eating habits, conducted by the Ministry of Health in 1999-2001,
the percentage of vegetarians and vegans was then 8.5% of the population.
The number of vegans is certainly on the increase. When I became vegan in
1992, I think that I knew almost every vegan in the country. And we were all
from the hard core of the animal rights movement. Now I meet new vegans all
the time, many of whom are not animal activists in any other way - just
keeping a cruelty free diet.

Abolitionist: What is your all-time favourite type of action?

Yossi: I believe that one remedy against getting burnt out is to find a channel of
activism that one really enjoys. It doesn't mean that one should do only
that - there is too much urgently-necessary work that is no fun for anyone.
For me drag is such an oasis. A friend of mine and myself created an animal
rights drag show under the title "The Mice and Lea Goldberg Horror Show".
(Actually it is not only drag - it includes also videos and more theatrical
portions. And it is not only about the rights non-human animals, but also
about other social issues and the connection of them all). I like this show
because it allows me to do activism in a non confrontational way; because it
allows me to reach people deeply and emotionally - and because it allows me
to discover new things about myself, challenge myself and develop
personally. As to the effectiveness, I think that humor and art are a
wonderful way to overcome the well developed rationalizations that allow
people to continue living in a way that they will never be able to truly
confront and defend. The technique of cabaret "attacks" them, at times when
the rationalization-mechanisms abandon their guarding positions, and can cut
directly into the heart.

Abolitionist: Are there are zoos in Israel?

Yossi: Yes, there are zoos, and too many. Some of them are relatively less abusive, giving animals good conditions with much space and rich environment. For enslaved animals who were born in captivity and have a small chance of being
rehabilitated back to nature, this is the minimum they deserve. However, not all
animals in zoos are such. Many are victims of the wild animal trade. And in
many places the conditions are really bad.

Abolitionist: What are the campaigns that Anonymous For Animal Rights are currently working on?

Yossi: The newest campaign of Anonymous is titled "lying eggs". It is directed
against egg consumption, but attacking it in an indirect way: On the
surface, the target is to stop misleading labels on egg packages. Pictures
and even verbal descriptions of happy hens, nesting and strolling in the
grass, are contrasted with the documented conditions of hens in the
facilities of the same companies. The message, put in consumerist terms, is
easy to agree upon: Tell the consumers the truth, Do not mislead us! Let us
follow the European Union, where each egg and each package is labeled
according to the production method "caged" "barn" or "free range"!

But whoever agrees to the consumerist message (which is almost impossible
not to agree with) must then also confront her own consumption habits.
Because if I am offended by not being told the truth, why do I need it at
all? If this truth is so important to me, I have some duty to learn it and
act on it. And here Anonymous doesn't give people easy solutions to clean
their conscious while still participating in abuse. Letter writing to the
authorities is only one suggested action. Free range eggs are not proposed
as a solution (though there is explanation on what they are and in which
aspects they are less cruel than battery cages eggs). Instead, people are
prompted to get rid of eating eggs, and information is given on related
nutrition issues and on cooking without eggs.

Links:

Anonymous - http://www.anonymous.org.il/english.htm

Anonymous lying eggs campaign - http://www.eggs.co.il/

Animal TV - http://www.animal-tv.org/html/english/index.html

One Struggle - http://www.onestruggle.org./english_frameset2.htm

Sogrot - http://www.sogrot.org/english.php

The Mice and Lea Goldberg Horror Show - www.political-drag.org
(Hebrew only).