Natalie Portman Equates Consuming Meat to Nazi-Era Atrocities

Actress Natalie Portman compared consuming meat to crimes committed during the Holocaust in a video paying tribute to famed writer and animal welfare rights activist Isaac Bashevis Singer, released Monday by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).

Highlighting a passage from Singer’s famed autobiographical novel Shosha, Portman says in the controversial video,“We do to God’s creatures what the Nazis did to us.”

“Nowadays, many of us speak up for animals, but it wasn’t always like this,” the actress adds. “Decades ago, one man articulated the plight of animals so boldly that the modern world couldn’t ignore him.”

Times of Israel writes:

In 2009, a German court banned PETA from comparing meat eating to the Nazi slaughter of Jews, and forbade it to use photos of concentration camp inmates and other images of the Nazi genocide alongside photos of abused animals in a campaign it called Holocaust on your Plate.

The banned German PETA campaign included eight large panels showing black-and-white images of emaciated concentration camp inmates next to full color photos of chickens, turkeys and other animals fattened for the slaughter. One poster bore the slogan, in German, “Final Humiliation” and another read “For animals, all people are Nazis.” A photo of children in a concentration camp stood next to one of piglets in a stall. Under them was the caption “Child Butcher.”

Once asked why animal welfare was a cause close to his heart, Singer replied, “I did not become a vegetarian for my health. “I did it for the health of the chickens.” Portman, a longtime vegan, notes Singer was also a staunch advocate for both gay and women’s rights.

In the Nobel laureate’s story The Slaughter, Singer tells a gut-wrenching tale about a young man’s tribulations in balancing his love for animals and job as a ritual slaughterer. “As long as people will shed the blood of innocent creatures there can be no peace, no liberty, no harmony,” the slaughterer is quoted in Singer’s story. “Slaughter and justice cannot dwell together.”

Portman’s PETA video appearance comes just months after the Jerusalem-born Oscar winner’s refused to accept the 2018 Genesis Prize — which is acclaimed as the ‘Jewish Nobel’ — after Israel’s staunch military response to Palestinian terrorist attacks across the Gaza border.

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