Last Wednesday, Israeli prime minister’s wife Sara Netanyahu posted on his Facebook page: “I was shocked to see the terrible conditions in which animals are being shipped to the State of Israel. It’s heartbreaking.”
Her comment followed whistleblower footage of a sheep transport from Australia to the Middle East and North Africa during, in August, during which 2,400 sheep perished from heat stress.
“I am a full partner of the animal rights organizations that are concerned with the well-being of animals in Israel and around the world,” she wrote, adding: “I turned to the prime minister to do his utmost to stop this terrible suffering. I also turned to Minister of Agriculture Uri Ariel (Habayit Hayehudi – DI) and I am sure that he will do everything in his power. I will also appeal to my friend, the wife of the Prime Minister of Australia, and I am sure they will be touched.”
“No living being deserves to suffer such conditions and such humiliating treatment, and we as a society must not accept it. We owe the animals the minimum conditions to live with dignity,” she concluded.
The PM’s wife’s heartfelt post was picked up by The Gurdian in the UK (Israel’s first lady Sara Netanyahu ‘appalled’ by Australia’s live export trade), and in Australia by The Daily Advertiser (Israel’s first lady condemns sheep cruelty). In Israel – not so much.
Eyal Meged, blogging for Ha’aretz, wrote on Sunday (Have you heard of the wonderful act of Sarah Netanyahu? of course not): “Sara Netanyahu has done the most appropriate and worthy thing to do on Holocaust Day. She led to the stopping of transports of thousands of innocent sheep who were condemned to torturous journeys even devil has not dreamed up, from Australia to the Middle East.”
“This is the real ‘Never Again,'” Meged wrote, “We will no longer do to living beings what was done to us.”
Meged went as far as to compare Sara Netanyahu to Raoul Wallenberg, noting: “Let all the cranes scream all they want, let those who hate Netanyahu for a living generate their ridicule. All the shrieks will not change the fact that Sara Netanyahu has done a great, far-reaching thing that no other wife of a prime minister here had done before her.”
Which stands to show you that even Ha’aretz can be gracious on occasion.