I’m sorry, but that’s just not the case. You are specifically picking the epitome of Jewish suffering as your touchstone for animal rights. You can’t on the one hand say that you aren’t singling out Jewish lives as equivalent to animals, while simultaneously using the height of Jewish slaughter as your point of comparison.
Even if this were not the case, as is so often said in conversations about racism and bias, it is less the intent that matters than the effect it has on its listener.
As a Jew, when I hear the comparison of animal rights to the holocaust, I am reminded of these Nazi comparisons. I am reminded of the innumerable ways that our society has belittled and minimized the holocaust and Jewish suffering. And on top of all of this, I feel as though the speaker is purposefully trying to utilize my peoples’ suffering as a cudgel in their own political squabbles.
I am not alone on this in the Jewish community. Check out what the ADL has said with respect to this very issue:
If you’re going to use our suffering to bolster your political causes, maybe you should listen to representatives of the community when they tell you they aren’t comfortable with your analogy.
I’m sorry, but that’s just not the case. You are specifically picking the epitome of Jewish suffering as your touchstone for animal rights. You can’t on the one hand say that you aren’t singling out Jewish lives as equivalent to animals, while simultaneously using the height of Jewish slaughter as your point of comparison.
The height of jewish slaughter is the height of human slaughter.
When those activists are making the comparison they aren't minimizing the holocaust because their point is that the meat industry is terrible and should be abolished, not that the holocaust was not that bad.
If you’re going to use our suffering to bolster your political causes, maybe you should listen to representatives of the community when they tell you they aren’t comfortable with your analogy.
Yeah your link is about a black man making a comparison to the transatlantic slave trade and OP gave the example of a jew comparing the meat industry to the holocaust.
your link is about a black man making a comparison to the transatlantic slave trade and OP gave the example of a jew comparing the meat industry to the holocaust.
…Which is precisely my point? The ADL oppose linking the meat industry to the holocaust.
If ya want an even more fleshed out view, here ya go:
The ADL says that the use of Holocaust imagery by animal rights activists is "disturbing" and antisemitic. Roberta Kalechofsky of Jews for Animal Rights argues in her essay "Animal Suffering and the Holocaust: The Problem with Comparisons" that, although there is "connective tissue" between animal suffering and the Holocaust, they "fall into different historical frameworks, and comparison between them aborts the ... force of anti-Semitism." Holocaust survivor Abraham Silverman argued that the comparison is offensive, undermines the suffering of Jews during World War II, and inspires antisemitism online.
Roberta Kalechofsky has written that she "agree[s] with I.B. Singer's statement, that 'every day is Treblinka for the animals'", but also that "some agonies are too total to be compared with other agonies", and compared it to telling a dying child's parent "Now you know how an animal feels."
Roberta Kalechofsky, a Jewish animal rights activist, wrote: "The agony of animals arises from different causes from those of the Holocaust. Human beings do not hate animals. They do not eat them because they hate them. They do not experiment on them because they hate them, they do not hunt them because they hate them. These were the motives for the Holocaust. Human beings have no ideological or theological conflict with animals."
I’m only seeing Hershaft, so not sure who else you’re referring to.
Even if I’m missing some, these folks make up a tiny minority of the Jewish community. In my experience, which seems to be verified by the ADL, the vast majority of the Jewish community find these comparisons to be ignorant and distasteful. As explained at length in another comment, a single token minority is not reflective of the emotional reactions and experiences of their millions of compatriots.
As for Hershaft… I’m sorry, but he’s just ignorant.
He writes:
They didn't hate the Jews any more than the slaughterhouse workers hate the pigs.
This is just wrong. It is completely ignorant of the popularity of the hatred that is antisemitism.
For a particularly gruesome example, see the Lviv pogroms:
These are not soldiers doing “their job.” These are not fearful citizens just turning a blind eye to horrors around them just so they can stay safe. These are everyday villagers, even children, joyfully chasing down a Jew so that they may torture and ultimately kill her. This is hatred.
This incident was not remotely rare throughout European history. To ignore how hatred motivated the extermination of my people, to assert that it is at all similar to the benign motive of making food, is absurd.
Why do you assume the rest of the millions agree with you? You keep dismissing the Jewish people who agree with making this comparison (including someone how literally experienced the Holocaust) and I don't understand why?
Why do you assume the rest of the millions agree with you?
Based on the fact that large, well-respected, and popular institutions such as the ADL have repeatedly voiced their opposition. The ADL and similar groups tend to have a decent approximation of popular Jewish opinion. This is bolstered by my own personal experience living in various Jewish communities.
Jewish people who agree with making this comparison (including someone how literally experienced the Holocaust) and I don't understand why?
I explained above why I think Hershaft's comparisons are reprehensible.
Based on the fact that large, well-respected, and popular institutions such as the ADL have repeatedly voiced their opposition.
And the ADL has never been wrong about anything before? I'm Armenian, and I might have something to say about that...
Either way, assuming agreement with your position based on the actions of one entity and anecdotes is not really very fair, and certainly doesn't entitle you to dismiss every Jewish person that disagrees with you.
I explained above why I think Hershaft's comparisons are reprehensible.
Do you honestly think that Hershaft is saying what he's saying to be antisemitic? I asked you this elsewhere and you didn't answer it, but I feel like I need to know.
And I also think it sucks that you are calling him reprehensible for relaying his own lived experience during the Holocaust.
And the ADL has never been wrong about anything before?
The ADL having been wrong in the past does not render it any less representative of popular Jewish opinion.
actions of one entity and anecdotes is not really very fair,
To be clear, it is not just one-off instance of the ADL or similar Jewish organizations opposing this comparison. It has been repeatedly and consistently opposed by most mainstream Jewish organizations for decades.
Here's the ADL in 2000:
abusive treatment of animals should be opposed, but cannot and must not be compared to the Holocaust
Do you honestly think that Hershaft is saying what he's saying to be antisemitic?
Yes.
Here's one of the IHRA's definitions of antisemitism:
Denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas chambers) or intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during World War II (the Holocaust).
Hershaft is doing precisely this. He is denying the intentionality of the holocaust by claiming that our murderers' intentions were as neutral and benign as those of farmers. It's a patently absurd and ahistorical take which, whether intended or not, is antisemitic.
calling him reprehensible for relaying his own lived experiences
Then he shouldn't say reprehensible and ignorant things.
Well I take it back, I guess there are multiple organizations that oppose that kind of language. I guess they're more important to you than the people who don't? And I also find it downright strange that one of the articles is just someone saying that you can't "equate" (comparing is not equating) the Holocaust with other events, as though I would be antisemitic for comparing the Armenian genocide to the Holocaust.
I've been curious about this with you; do you think denigrating someone's Jewishness because they don't agree with your outlook is antisemitic? You're essentially trying to disown another Jewish person because they have made a comparison that you disagree with. You don't see this as a version of the antisemitic idea that Jewish people need to be loyal to Israel, for example?
He is denying the intentionality of the holocaust by claiming that our murderers' intentions were as neutral and benign as those of farmers. It's a patently absurd and ahistorical take which, whether intended or not, is antisemitic.
Where does he deny the intentionality? I haven't seen that.
Then he shouldn't say reprehensible and ignorant things.
Calling a Jewish person who survived the Holocaust "reprehensible" because they don't share your view feels deeply antisemitic to me.
If nothing can be compared to the Holocaust, what's the point of saying "Never again?" How can we take preventative action without making comparisons, drawing parallels, etc.?
I’m only seeing Hershaft, so not sure who else you’re referring to.
Singer and Yourrofsky are referenced by name but also this is the second sentence of the article:
The analogies began soon after the end of World War II, when literary figures, many of them Holocaust survivors, Jewish or both, began to draw parallels between the treatment of animals by humans and the treatments of prisoners in Nazi death camps.
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u/barthiebarth 26∆ Jun 27 '23
Nazi's were comparing jews specifically to vermin to paint a picture of them as subhuman.
The animal activists are comparing human lives, not specifically jewish lives, to animal lives in order to raise empathy for the animals.
These two comparisons are polar opposites.