Israelis brand selves in solidarity with animals

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JERUSALEM (AP) — Sasha Boojor squirmed and struggled as black-clad masked men yanked him out of a cage and branded him with a hot iron. While the smell of seared flesh was disturbing, he said, this shocking and painful act was worth it: He was showing solidarity with animals that suffer branding on farms around the world.

Boojor claims 30 people have brand themselves worldwide, and thousands more support their effort to make the case for animal rights. The group, like other animal liberation movements, opposes the use of animals for human consumption, research or entertainment, going far beyond demands by more moderate groups for humane treatment and painless slaughtering.

Critics, including some animal rights sympathizers, believe this movement is going too far.

A public branding in Tel Aviv last year launched the movement, called 269Life. Since then it has spread, with brandings in Italy, the United States, Argentina and elsewhere. On Wednesday, 11 people branded themselves in the Czech capital, Prague.

The group's name derives from a number branded on a calf that activists encountered at an Israeli dairy farm last year. They chose its number, 269, as a way to individualize the calf, which is still alive.

"We aim to bring the pain and horror other animals face each and every day out of the suppressed darkness and into the realm of everyday life," the group states on its website.

In recent months, the group has staged sensational and sometimes gruesome stunts in Israel. They have freed chickens from coops and defaced fountains with severed cow heads while dyeing the water blood-red.

The brandings set them apart from other animal rights groups.

Last October, Boojor and two other activists sat in a mock pen in a central Tel Aviv square, caged in with barbed wire, with tags bearing the number 269 dangling from their ears. One by one, they were hoisted out by men in ski masks and held down to be branded, as bystanders watched in horror.

http://news.yahoo.com/israelis-brand-selves-solidarity-animals-061447667.html

Edited June 27, 2013 by Lincolns mullet