Academy Award-winning actress Natalie Portman has caused quite a stir after she compared killing animals for food to the Holocaust, for a video by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) – a controversial animal rights organization.
Pointing to Nobel Laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature for his work in 1978, Portman said: “Isaac Singer grew up in the same part of Poland as my family. And like them, he fled the horrors of the Holocaust.”
Quoting a character from one of Singer’s writings, Portman – a vegan – continues: “We do to God’s creatures what the Nazis did to us.”
The video ends with this: “As long as people will shed the blood of innocent creatures there can be no peace, no liberty, no harmony. Slaughter and justice cannot dwell together.”
This latest video comes nearly a decade after a German court banned PETA from comparing meat consumption to the Holocaust. The Times of Israel reported that the court ruled in 2009 that PETA could not use images of the Holocaust alongside abused animals.
The ruling came after the organization launched the “Holocaust on your Plate” campaign, which compared pictures of cruel conditions those who were targeted in the Holocaust endured with photos of abused animals. The campaign earned swift backlash from several quarters when it was rolled out.
As for Portman, this is not the first time she has drawn flak in recent months for her socio-political stances. In April, the actress drew criticism after she announced that she would not attend an awards ceremony in Israel, where she was to receive an award, since she did not want to “appear as endorsing Benjamin Netanyahu, who was to be giving a speech at the ceremony.”