Veganvashing settler colonialism: Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond, ‘In Israel’s Warped Logic, Veganism and Genocide Go Hand in Hand’, CounterPunch, 12/09/25 | settler colonial studies blog

Veganvashing settler colonialism: Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond, ‘In Israel’s Warped Logic, Veganism and Genocide Go Hand in Hand’, CounterPunch, 12/09/25

22Oct25

Excerpt: People around the world are waking up to the outlandish tenor of Israeli propaganda. It’sderanged to legitimize occupation and genocide on the grounds of self-defense. Or to cast refugees burned alive and forcibly starved to death as imperiling Western civilization. Or to frame the colonial entity’s armed forces – which gleefully brag about murdering children and destroying homes, and post trophy photos clad in the lingerie of women they murdered – as “the world’s most moral army.” Yet the discursive acrobatics do not end there. A lesser-known element of Israel’s disinformation campaign is its self-proclaimed status as the leading nation in animal rights. A richbodyof scholarship addresses the paradoxical relationship of veganism and animal liberation to colonialismin so-called Israel. On the one hand, the settler colony dehumanizes Palestinians, mobilizing the species divide to legitimizetheir erasure. On the other, it boasts of providing plant-based meals and synthetic combat wear to vegan soldiers. This framing perverts vegan ethics, which repudiate killing, confinement and the use of force against living beings. As Ahmad Safi, co-founder of the Palestinian Animal League, challenges, “What good is it if an Israeli soldier is vegan and wears leather-free boots if his gun is aimed at Palestinians?” This reality-distortion is known as veganwashing.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed