Gary Yourofsky – credit: Gary Yourofsky/Facebook
Gary Yourofsky is a name that will ring a bell with most vegans.
The animal rights activist, from Detroit, Michigan, is credited with singlehandedly turned more people vegan – including 8% of Israel – than anyone else in the world, after an hour-long speech he gave at Georgia Tech was recorded, translated into Hebrew, and shared on social media.
In it Gary, 45, who is Jewish himself, controversially calls slaughterhouses ‘concentration camps’ and compares the treatment of animals to the Holocaust.
The speech, which was recorded in the U.S., is now the most-viewed in Israel’s history, and is thought to have been the cataylst for a large portion of Israel’s population to go vegan.
Indeed, according to Israeli media, Yourofsky is responsible for increasing Israel’s vegan population from 5% to 13%.
Gary has also been arrested 13 times, is banned from entering Britain (despite never having been convicted of a crime or visiting) and Canada and has spent time in a maximum security prison after raiding a fur farm.
Here, in his own words, Yourofsky tells Metro.co.uk his argument for a meat-free lifestyle – and explains why he thinks his words have converted so many.
‘As a so-called intelligent and civilised species, how can we justify artificially impregnating/raping female animals so we can steal their babies after birth so those babies, along with the mothers, can be enslaved, raped and eventually murdered, too?
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‘The great Jewish humanitarian Isaac Bashevis Singer once explained: “What do they know – all these scholars, all these philosophers, all the leaders of the world?
‘They have convinced themselves that man, the worst transgressor of all the species, is the crown of creation. All other creatures were created merely to provide him with food, pelts, to be tormented, exterminated. In relation to them [animals], all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka.”
‘Singer’s indictment is probably the most damning statement ever about humankind.
‘It establishes the fact that violence is violence and murder is murder even if the victims have beaks, horns, gills, feathers or fur. Animals were the first victims of slavery, oppression and murder, which is how humans perfected these psychotic techniques for use on each other.
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‘The fact that Heinrich Himmler, the Gestapo commander who created the Jewish Holocaust’s gas chamber system, was a mass murderer of chickens before orchestrating the mass murder of humans makes the aforesaid point impossible to impugn.
‘If you drove to the nearest cow or chicken slaughterhouse and removed the animals and replaced them with Jews – or mentally-retarded people, black people and Gypsies – Birkenau would be resurrected. So the question I want you to ponder most is how come when cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys and fish are victims, everyone forgets how to think clearly and be compassionate?
‘The global atrocity of eating animals and wearing animal skins is responsible for the mass murder of more than 150 billion innocent animals annually. If you added up all the humans who have been enslaved, raped and murdered since the beginning of time, you wouldn’t even approach the 1 billion mark.
‘The Animal Holocaust remains the most massive and longest-running murder campaign of all time. And it makes veganism the most important aspect of animal rights because almost every animal who is abused and killed on this planet is abused and killed by the meat, dairy, egg and honey industries, despite the fact that humans have no right – nor need – to commodify animals and turn them into sandwiches and shoes.
‘The fundamental rights of life, liberty and bodily integrity – rights that every person reading this piece demands or takes for granted – should not be exclusive to humans.
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‘Small groups of people should not have to constantly convince the masses to stop enslaving and murdering groups of innocent beings, animal or human.
‘Fortunately, the Holy Land has been listening to the animal rights message and responding with sanity, compassion and clarity. And that’s because in 2010, a few Israeli activists put Hebrew subtitles on my 70-minute vegan lecture (recorded at Georgia Tech) and shared it extensively on social media.
‘That speech is now the most-viewed speech in the history of Israel with well over 1 million hits. With a population of 7 million, that means one in seven Israelis has seen it.
‘Since so many people were yearning for more information, I embarked on one of the most effective animal rights campaigns ever for six weeks in 2012-13, giving around 25 lectures in packed theatres and colleges in Jaffo, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Be’er Sheva, Givatayim and Haifa.
‘I also conducted more than a dozen interviews with newspaper, radio and TV outlets. The results have been astounding.
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‘Before Hebrew subtitles were added to my speech, Israeli media reported that 5% of the population was vegetarian/vegan. The estimates have now risen to 13%, with meat and dairy sales dropping 7%.
‘The demand for vegan products forced T’nuva, the largest dairy producer in Israel, to release four soy yogurts, while Domino’s added vegan cheese to all of its 50 locations, and more than 700 restaurants converted 25% of their menus to vegan fare.
Here’s the controversial speech in full:
‘Many people have asked me why the vegan message resonates so much in Israel.
‘After giving 2,660 lectures in America to more than 60,000 students, I discovered that Jews, along with black people, women, homosexuals, Hispanic people, and other oppressed people, have little difficulty understanding the evils of discrimination as all oppressed beings understand what it’s like to be marginalised and treated like nothing.
‘I never thought I would see such a massive shift to veganism in my lifetime.
‘Israel will, one day, become the first nation to abolish animal concentration camps once and for all. And while my speech got the ball rolling in Israel, the Israeli activists are the ones making The Holy Land truly holy.
‘They are without a doubt the most effective animal rights activists on the planet.’
You can read more from Gary on his website adaptt.org.