Vegans in Israel: What Would Martin Luther King Do?

- yen if you're trying to package your
Beach vacation in Israel as political activism you got to think twice if you are packaging a beach vacation in Myanmar can't you show some sympathy can't you show some concern can't you show some engagement with the political reality the situation [Music] [Music] [Music] oh-oh-oh I'm not doing that to pander for a fish I don't think anyone donates to me on the basis of my my fabulous girlfriend or or Beach tastic quality of life I don't think so I think you've been with me during that I think you saw I got less and less support and less and less interest I definitely had fewer and fewer female supporters on patreon when I went public with my with my you know it shouldn't be that fine a dotted line between political leader and camwhore those two things should be really far apart 2018 you know real close together to be a great I didn't know and I come upon University and I say the same thing Banas Yin white when I first started the channel I used to criticize a lot the rhetoric coming out of wanes young and direct action everywhere so if you've never heard of them don't google them you don't want to know but I used to criticize them a lot for their rhetoric saying that veganism should be based on and imitate the tactics and historical experience of dr. Martin Luther King jr. other vegan groups that have criticized have I think really exaggerated the extent to which MLK dr. Martin Luther King jr. can be used as an exemplar for being inst imitate the comparison between the situation of the black civil rights movement in America and our situation as vegans in 2018 is really extremely imperfect or extremely approximate to use one as an allegory for the other is going to be imperfect and misleading at best but nevertheless in circumstances like this I think I can ask the question fairly enough what would Martin Luther King jr. do what would MLK do if all these vegan activists want make these propaganda claims saying that we're the same as these civil rights demonstrators that our situation is comparable you know what we're doing for cows is somehow parallel to these other you know struggles for for human rights and human liberation well I don't know I take a look at Paul Bashir I take a look at James ass B I take a look at Earthling ad I take a look at Joey carb strong if these four guys four really prominent vegan activists if they stepped up their game by directly imitating the style substance rhetoric and even organization of dr. Martin Luther King jr. would that make things better or would that make things worse as imperfect and flawed as the allegory may be I've got to tell you in every way and in every sense I think that would only make things better you know a James a speak what would Martin Luther King jr. do what would MLK do would MLK be oh here with tens of thousands of dollars of tattoos on his bare chest swimming in the ocean making that into you know vegan propaganda would would Martin Luther King jr. be on Instagram doing what you're doing or if he did what would his attitude be towards that will he be proud of that whee-hee actively be out here preaching that that's his main and most effective form of activism if MLK was alive today he probably would have an Instagram but I mean that would be a hobby or a minor hobby at best and I don't think he'd be using the platform you know in in the way that you are I think it's interesting that the less and less legitimate the examples of vegan activism are that we apply it to no the more obvious its utility may seem freelee the banana girl freely if you've never heard of her don't google her don't you don't want to know live the rest your life not knowing who freelee the banana girl was freelee the banana girl said for years that she was the most effective vegan activist in the world okay I made out that claim freely today spends her time on permanent vacation living in the jungle weaving her own baskets growing her own vegetables engaged in handicrafts and I don't know outdoor gardening I'm what what can I tell you all right you can look at her career at any stage and ask this same simple question what would MLK do what would dr. Martin Luther King jr. have done if this bizarre circumstances and I think we all know the answer is not this and I think there were way better examples than em okay I'm not believe me I mean this is a really you know this is like using a rubber ruler to measure a round object or something these things don't really fit together that well this is not a perfect metric we're applying here but really loosely part of the crisis of confidence in vegan leadership is precisely that these people want to be rewarded as professional revolutionaries as professional full time activists and what they're doing isn't professional at all and this brings us to the main topic of this video Israel many a social and political cause has been destroyed internally by opinions about Israel the latest lie being spread about me is that I am a racist because in a calm and sober assessment of the israeli-palestinian situation I said that Palestinians are the most psychotic group of people on the planet I stand by that statement a few moments later let me be extra clear about this the holy land does not belong to the Palestinians or the Israelis it belongs to the animals here in Canada the Green Party of Canada just a couple of years ago tore itself apart I think the leadership resign and they elected a new leader and a whole bunch of their members quit because they could not decide what their policy statement on Israel and Palestine should be right now in Israel nobody cares what the Green Party of Canada has to say about their political situation right now in Palestine nobody's life is going to be improved or made worse by the policy position of the Green Party of Canada but this tore the party apart even though they're a political party that's supposed to be defined by ecology environmentalism concern about pollution and there's really no reason and for them to have liked a foreign policy or humanitarian intervention statement about Israel of Canada's mainstream parties the one that's furthest to the left the mainstream left-wing the NDP every time a major election comes up the precise wording of what is their position on Israel and Palestine I read it I got it on paper the last the last election I was here from Canada anyway and I remember it was like oh well you know we simultaneously support peace for all and justice for all mm-hmm yeah I don't know look politics can make hypocrites of us all conflict over Israel and Palestine tore my own family apart it tore it apart before I was born and it's gonna continue tearing it apart until the older generation dies my Jewish grandmother was estranged from two of her own daughters because two of her daughters were anti Zionist and she my grandmother became pro-zionist I don't know when she took that on in her life I don't know when she took on that position and you know as her life went on actually one of her two daughters who had been hit his I&S flipped and became pro-zionist and then those two daughters didn't get along anymore they used to be close friends they became enemies they hated each other over it every single person in my family was touched one way or another by basically the question of how much of a hypocrite are you willing to be over Israel and Palestine now my own attitude towards this is nihilistic and pragmatic and people always want to ask me about this and one of the main reasons to not deal with it is that there's no positive difference I can make I had an Israeli guy come into my livestream chat and in a totally sympathetic manner I mentioned to him you know at one time I started the application process to become an Israeli citizen and you do a series of phone calls and interviews right at the beginning that process before you've signed any paperwork what have you you know that want to counsel you about this decision and one of the people asked me over the phone so this was something like an Israeli embassy employee you know low level somehow connected to the government of Israel type of person asked me why would you want to move to Israel and I gave the following answer if you guys know me if you know my channel you know I'm being a hundred percent honest about this and I was a hundred percent honest and blunt at the time I said you know in the past I did humanitarian work in Laos and Cambodia I've really always had an interest in living in war-torn poverty-stricken disaster areas and I see Israel as a place that's right in the middle of all that it's not it's not gonna end anytime soon you know I said in slightly more words that I regard Israel as a disaster but for me from my position that's okay just as with living in a place like Cambodia if you feel that you can make a positive difference in that disaster if you can have some kind of humanitarian engagement with it then it can be very rewarding to live in an area that has some features of you know civil war poverty you know etc I just mentioned also you know I did humanitarian work where there there was still civil war on right on the border between Laos and Myanmar so there they're actually still were bullets flying not worth digressing into but in terms of ongoing civil war in some ways a very peaceful place to live but you know you knew just around the corner you'd meet people who were shaking up who'd just come from you know situations with gunfire and stuff so was out of sight but not out of mind the the sort of various low-level revolts and civil wars going on up there at that time when I did that humanitarian work so anyway I once had this guy come come into my live stream and I was talking about this just as I'm talking now into the camera to the microphone and this guy's I don't know anything else about him he's vegan and he's in Israel he was incredibly upset and defiant and enraged and he demanded to know how do you define disaster how can you describe Israel's disaster like as if he thinks Israel is a great success story or something I don't know but he objected to to the use of the word disaster and for me it's exactly a word like that that has to be accepted as value neutral I mean whatever it was whatever the utopian vision was when Israel was founded by the Zionists who believed that this was a good idea at the time it sure wasn't this right I mean the current status quo whether it's the status quo for secular Jews religious Jews Arab Israelis or Palestinians this is not what anyone wanted when they signed on for this project so I think it's really fair to say as an outsider this is a disaster now there are a million other ways you can just measure it being a disaster any country where the military budget is over a certain number or any country where the number of shootings per annum in order to keep the peace over certain um you could probably come up with some objective metrics in terms of the extent to which just constant low-level violence is necessary to maintain the illusion of a Western European standard of life in the middle of the desert surrounded by hostile countries and with of course so much hostility within the country um that strean I think it's fair to to describe that as a disaster so to be completely blunt and direct here I am NOT a Zionist I I think it is fair to say I am an anti Zionist however I'm also a nihilist and I'm a pragmatist and I never make the mistake that so many left wingers do I never make the mistake of looking at Israel seeing what's wrong with Israel and then assuming that there's something right with the other side assuming that there's something right with Hamas assuming that there's something right with the Palestinian Liberation Organization or you know Palestinian Authority whatever the other negotiating parties might be at the time I don't look at that situation and assume there's something right about the government of Syria or the government of Iran or the other really vocal opponents be very simply you know both sides can be wrong and in terms of what's possible and practicable in making the situation better that may involve some very tough very you know morally flawed decisions what's the next step you take from here and obviously guys we just went through this in Afghanistan I don't know if nobody else noticed but the United States Canada and England with many millions of dollars spent by other countries but huge budgets spent by the english-speaking countries is spent an enormous amount of money trying to make Afghanistan into I guess what you could call a modern nation-state a working country with all you know some of the hardest things to achieve just having a normal male and parcel delivery service having postage stamps again in Afghanistan they started from such a low level of social development and organization and you you take a look look at all the terrible ethical consequences sorry I should have said look at the terrible ethical compromises and look at how meager the final outcomes and consequences are there's not a lot to show from that engagement and there's no question that in next ten years none of these countries United States Canada England none of them are gonna make Israel the same kind of priority that they made Afghanistan over such a long period of time so the hope for things getting better or significantly changing is very dim my problem is that celebrity culture has devoured political culture the problem with James ASPI going to the beach in Israel and just saying how beautiful it is just saying how wonderful everything is is very simply that he's not remotely living up to the standard that we would expect of someone like dr. Martin Luther King jr. if you're trying to package your beach vacation in Israel as political activism you got to think twice if you were packaging a beach vacation in Myanmar can't you show some sympathy can't you show some concern can't you show some engagement with the political reality of the situation I've been asking this about Israel I've been asking this about Thailand I've been asking this about so many places around the world for years and years I said look there were beaches everywhere if vegans were doing this in Egypt or the Ukraine I mean sorry there are actually some beautiful beaches you know in the Crimea you know if you're doing this anywhere where there's a war zone or where a military dictatorship has taken over the government why is there just no sensitivity no curiosity no engagement no interest if Martin Luther King jr. took a vacation in these places you know I know maybe he couldn't make a difference maybe he couldn't do anything but you tell me what would Martin Luther King jr. do what would MLK do am i so wildly optimistic to think that he would show more sensitivity more concern and more engagement with the political reality of these countries whether it's we think of that as the suffering of the oppressed or just the events going on in these wars etc.etc scarcity of water ecological problems whatever there were a million issues you could tug at here but given that these are people who are both political leaders and on permanent vacation I don't think this is too much to ask and and I really think it's a credit to vegans across the board that they have the maturity now to start asking these questions to say why can't our political leaders live up to a higher standard so that we don't feel embarrassed and ashamed so that we don't feel that the good name of veganism is being dragged through the mud by those who boast that they're the world's most influential leaders by those who boast that they're doing the most to quote-unquote save the planet human rights activist Ashley travel to the gaza strip to build chicken coops so who's the real prisoner who's the real victim who's got it bad I would never go to jail nor give up my freedom or my life for any human rights cause because we are monsters one struggle one fight Animal Liberation [ __ ] Human Rights [Music] evolution