July
1998
In
Search of the Peaceable Kingdom
Interview with Yonni Wolfson
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Yossi Wolfson coordinates Anonymous
for Animal Rights, which was founded in 1994 and has about 600 members
in Israeal itself. Satya asked him for his thoughts about animal rights
in Israel.
Q: How did you start Anonymous and come up
with the name?
A: Our dream
was to build a grassroots movement all over the country and to help
start a center for people that would have a library and would be a meeting
place. We thought it could really be a backbone for the movement. The
center meant that they could come any time and find what to do and find
other people. This we achieved. As to our name: The idea is that animals
who suffer in factory farming, in laboratories--anywhere--are usually
anonymous. They are always in huge numbers--millions, billions--but
they are still anonymous. Not only are the animals anonymous, but poor
people, old people, Third World people are anonymous. We see their pictures
on television but we don't know their names. On the other hand, the
activist, someone who distributes leaflets, who demonstrates in the
street, who speaks in the school--he stays anonymous. He carries the
message but no one knows his name.
Q: What are the key issues in Israel at the
moment relating to animals?
A:
Right now we have a lot of problems with the Israeli Nature Reserves
Authority. They are supposed to deal with wildlife, not only wildlife
living in the wild but also wild animals used in research, or in any
facility, or circuses. These animals include anything from frogs to
gazelles to wolves.
We're concerned about animals that are not in the wild--like
monkeys in research facilities, for which they have to get a license
from the authorities. There are plans for a new facility in the south
of Israel. As breeding monkeys in captivity is difficult and slow, we
suspect that the facilitiy will also function as an agent to buy wild
monkeys and sell them as captive bred. An American citizen who is involved
in the project has been convicted for smuggling primates. Also involved
is a person from the Biological Institute in Nes Ziona, where experimentation
on biological and chemical weapons takes place.
The campaign against this facility has
consisted of appeals to the settlement where it is planned to be built,
demonstrations and getting media coverage. After some of our activists
started a hunger strike on this issue, the Ministry of the Environment
announced that it would delay offering a license to the facility. We
will continue our campaign until the project is canceled altogether.
For this campaign, we had wonderful cooperation with the Israeli Society
for the Abolition of Vivisection and also with an animal welfare organization.
Each organization contributed in the areas where it was best.
Q: What other campaigns have you been involved
with?
A: We have
also been involved in circuses. We managed to convince the Nature Reserves
Authority to stop circuses using wild animals in their acts. Wherever
circuses--mainly European--went in the country, people from our organization
would picket and distribute leaflets and explain the facts to people.
We hoped that people wouln't enter the circus tent, and many people
didn't enter--mainly kids, who told their parents they didn't want to
go in.
We found afterwards that the real success was that
people became aware, and this made the ground ready for banning circuses.
Unfortunately, this year the ban was broken
and the Medeano circus, which has elephants, lions, horses and dogs,
was let into Israel. We launched a campaign even more intensive than
the one before. We bombarded the Ministry of the Environment with hundreds
of letters, held dozens of demonstrations, and got a lot of favorable
coverage in the media. The issue was discussed on two municipal boards,
and the city of Ra'anana denied the circus entry. We met with the Director
General of the Ministry of the Environment who promised to initiate
legislation banning animal circuses once and for all.
Q: Are you involved with vegetarian outreach?
A: We put a
lot of energy into vegetarianism and into fighting the fur industry,
which is very small--but the fact that it exists in such a hot country
is outrageous. There is no excuse for that. It is only vanity. Most
of the fur shops are passed from generation to generation. But they
are closing because we picket them very intensively and because of many
Animal Liberation Front (ALF) actions, causing shops lots of damage.
Q: Is it easier to have a national campaign because
Israel is a small country with a smaller media than the United States?
A: We have
problems in Israel because there are so many political problems. The
media is also very tabloid, so it is not easy to get details into the
media. When you do, however, you have really good exposure because there
are only three national newspapers and the local newspapers are connected
to them. Sometimes if you succeed in putting something in local newspapers
in one city it will also be published in other local newspapers.
Q: I heard somebody once say that falafel and
baba ghanoush and hummus were the things that bind Jews and Muslims
together. Does animal rights reach across the Jewish-Muslim divide?
A: Well, we
try to reach out to Palestinians. We don't succeed very much. That's
a problem. Palestinians have a lot of urgent problems which they need
to concern themselves with. And we cannot as Jewish Israelis say: "You're
not ethical eating meat." We are not in a place to offer any criticism
of what they do: They won't take it and we won't do it. We hope to have
better outreach, for instance if we could translate some things into
Arabic. In Judaism and also in Islam there are many things you can pick
up concerning animal rights. In Judaism, for example, there are some
of the first anti-cruelty laws in the whole world. And it is very easy
to be vegan in the Middle East. We are in a situation to discuss it
with Palestinians, especially Israeli Palestinians. There is a little
bit of outreach and cooperation. There is growing environmental awareness.
We had some cases during the Occupation where animals suffered from
curfews when people could not feed them, and where animals--such as
donkeys--were shot by the Israeli Defense Force. These are the things
that we can try to intervene on.
Q: What is your target audience for outreach?
A: One of
the things that is important in Anonymous is that we have a lot of outreach
to youth. About 40 percent of our registered activists are 14 to 18
years old. They are the ones who do most of the activity--and not only
the doing, but they are the ones who plan and lead the organization.
Our plan was to build the organization to help people around the country
do what they like to do. In the beginning we thought that we could approach
people better if we worked on fur and on things that people could get
turned away from easily. But we had a lot of pressure from activists
to work more on vegetarianism and veganism directly. We produced a leaflet,
and these activists became very successful--mainly in parts of the country
that really weren't into veganism--converting people at a very high
rate to veganism and vegetarianism.
Q: What do you feel is the best way to organize
activists?
A: I think
there's no one formula for activism. I don't think you can be a national
organization working through lobbying and through legislation and at
the same time be a good grassroots organization. I think the best thing
is that there are different organizations working in different ways,
with different degrees of radicalism, and cooperating whenever it's
possible. In Israel, Anonymous and the Israeli Society for the Abolition
of Vivisection go hand in hand. But sometimes it is profitable that
we are two different organizations.
Q: What can American activists do to help
promote animal rights in Israel?
A: Well, first of all, money is really
important! In Israel there is not much of a giving culture. People contribute
money but not as much as in the United States. The idea of a tax-deductible
contribution is limited to organizations that do humanitarian work with
human beings. We do our best with Israeli money, but money from the
U.S. is needed if we want to keep the center open and have activities.
The other thing that is helpful are resources. Resources from the U.S.
are usually in English, but many people in Israel read English and we
try to translate things into Hebrew.
The third thing is just to be there. It's
always empowering to hear about what is going on in the U.S. and to
have visitors from the U.S. We try to learn a lot from what we see in
the U.S. Industry in Israel is about 10 years behind the U.S., and if
we can be one or two steps in front of industry in Israel we can have
a lot of success. And there are many other things that can help. Sometimes
we can use the American Freedom of Information Act and Americans can
write to the Ministers in Israel concerning different things--like congratulating
the Minister of the Environment for not letting circuses come into Israel
and asking him to continue with it. Or, writing to the Minister of Education
asking him to stop animal vivisection in schools. All different things.
What is interesting in Israel is that there
is a very dynamic system. Things can be changed here. It is not like
the U.S., where everything is huge and established already. Animal abuse
is not as developed as in the U.S. --although it is getting developed--and
people are still very open to new ideas and we have had many achievements.
We can have more. I think that people in the U.S. can help us and they
can benefit from our achievements, because there will be another Western
country with less animal abuse.
Yossi Wolfson works for Anonymous.
For more information on, to contribute to, or to contact Anonymous write
to: Anonymous, P.O. Box 6315, Tel Aviv 61062, Israel. Tel.: 011-972-3-525-4632;
Fax: 011-972-3-525-8599.
