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Activists work to make animal rights a Lebanese issue
But human misery makes it a tough sellAlexis Baghdadi
Special to The Daily StarFor people like Hadia Harb, shooting birds for sport, executing stray dogs, or simply abandoning pets on the streets are criminal and brutal acts.
Harb, dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at the Lebanese American University, is one of the founders of a semi-official animal welfare club that started two months ago at the American University of Beirut. The goal of the club is to make life a little more humane for animals, which are often of low priority in a country consumed by humanitarian and economic crises.
Other founders include Sami Khayat an actor and singer in Lebanon and Jason Miller, an English literature professor at AUB.
�Human beings should not only be entitled to receiving compassion; they should be responsible for showing compassion,� says Miller.As part of their efforts, some club members scour the AUB campus feeding whatever cats they find and dispensing basic medical care to them whenever possible. It is an initiative that is not always well received.
�There�s no denying that this type of group has its advantages � but why spend money on cats in AUB of all places? Especially when right outside the university gates there are dozens of hungry and sick beggars,� says Osama Fakih, a junior majoring in business.
But Julia Mahfouz, a senior studying English literature, doesn�t see it that way.
�Caring for animals is an act of kindness like any other,� she says. �It is not a question of who or what is more entitled to kindness, it is simply about being kind, and as such, it should not be the privilege of a unique class, race or even species.�An animal welfare society existed previously in Lebanon - under the French Mandate. It had a shelter next to the National Museum, and held several activities sponsored by the local French government.
After the country gained its independence in 1943, the society was dismantled. Today, thanks to a growing coalition of animal-lovers, a new society is attempting to pick up where its predecessor left off. Friends of animals have recently found supporters as prominent as Chouf MP Walid Jumblatt, who have taken the first steps towards founding a national animal welfare society named Animal Friends Society Without Borders Animal Life.
Many share Fakih�s views, however, that animal welfare is a waste of time and money that could otherwise be devoted to human beings in need. Faced with such hostility, animal-lovers have a hard time justifying their cause.�Ideally, institutions for the needy and animal welfare organizations should work hand in hand,� Miller says. The difference between the two, he asserts, is that organizations doing humanitarian work already exist, but that there is no such group tending to animals.
Red Cross workers in Lebanon drew some comparisons between their work and that of animal activists. The Lebanese Red Cross, they pointed out, is heavily dependent on volunteers.
�Fifteen years of war and the relative insufficiency and high-cost of health services have made people aware of the need for organizations like the Red Cross and their importance,� says Marc Nahhas, a Lebanese Red Cross volunteer.�The same can be true of animals as well,� maintains Elie Abi Rached, another volunteer. �Most people rush to help animals only when they see the need for help that is, when an animal is on the verge of extinction.�
Studies in the United States have found that animal-lovers are more socially inclined and less likely to engage in violent crimes than other people. Harb says her research has also shown that �by caring for animals we become more civil to our fellow man.�
Currently, however, animal-lovers have a battle ahead of them, fighting against the stereotype of what Fakih sarcastically called �the Brigitte Bardot factor (that) makes the premenstrual syndrome cycle of a seal in Greenland more important than the beggar at your door.�
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