In a new video released by PETA, actress Natalie Portman compares the killing of animals for meat consumption to the Holocaust.
Portman makes the comparison by quoting Nobel Prize in Literature recipient Isaac Bashevis Singer, an influential Polish-born Jewish writer from the 20th century.
“Isaac Singer grew up in the same part of Poland as my family,” Portman says in the video. “And like them, he fled the horrors of the Holocaust.”
“We do to God’s creatures what the Nazis did to us,” Portman says, quoting a character from one of Singer’s novel.
“As long as people will shed the blood of innocent creatures there can be no peace, no liberty, no harmony,” the video concludes. “Slaughter and justice cannot dwell together.”
According to the Times of Israel, PETA was banned from comparing meat consumption to the Holocaust by a German court in 2009. The court told PETA that they could not use images of the Holocaust alongside abused animals after PETA launched the “Holocaust on your Plate” campaign.
The video caused a stir online. Below are a few examples of responses:
This is not the first time Portman found herself in the middle of controversy in recent months. In April, she announced she would not attend an awards ceremony in Israel, where she was being awarded a prize, because she did not want to “appear as endorsing Benjamin Netanyahu, who was to be giving a speech at the ceremony.”