Pro-Palestinian protesters recently came to PETA’s office, just up from the White House, and shot a video of themselves dumping paper sheep’s heads on our property. Their axe to grind, according to the woman on the bullhorn, was that PETA has failed to denounce Israel. That’s like attacking Habitat for Humanity for not building houses in Sudan. Habitat, like PETA, was founded for a specific purpose: That’s what people donate to us to do, and that’s the job we get on with every day.

Animals don’t take sides, yet they suffer greatly in human battles. PETA has been in Ukraine since the conflict began, pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into pulling injured, petrified, and abandoned animals from the rubble. Two of our vans there have been destroyed by drones, and two wonderful volunteer rescuers have been killed. In the Middle East, we’ve donated to both Israeli and Palestinian animal protection organizations and appealed to the secretary of the United Nations to let us put animal foods and medicines on the convoys entering Gaza.