No hope of escape?

To the Editor:

You are locked in a coffin. Constrained, constricted, and terrified by claustrophobic thoughts. Squeezed in so tightly that you can't turn around, fed at your captors whim and no hope of escape?

Many creatures live their entire lives in such nightmarish conditions. Dogs, cats, and monkeys in "scientific" experiments, rabbits and mice in cosmetics testing labs, chickens, pigs, and cows in factory farms, elephants and big cats in circuses, dolphins in Sea World warehouses. The list and the suffering are endless. All the animals experience pain, fear, profound isolation, and probably a numbing sense of hopelessness.

Of course, the world is also filled with endless human suffering and countless victims. In some ways the situation of Palestinians living in Israel's occupied territories is similar to that of the captive animals. Like the animals, the Palestinians are severely confined behind walls in Gaza, their movements in both Gaza and the West Bank are strictly controlled by the Israeli Defense Forces, and many Palestinians eat only when Israel permits food shipments to pass through the military blockade.

Sometimes it's just too painful to look at these horrors - it's easier to watch TV or listen to music or go shopping. But we are the ones who are free and we are the ones who can speak up. The victims have no voice and no choice. The suffering (both human and animal) will only end if enough of us raise our voices and make different choices. Choices like not eating meat or poultry; not going to circuses or racetracks; not buying products tested on animals; and not buying goods produced in Israel's occupied territories http://www.hudsonvalleybds.org/.

Eli Kassirer