1. "Starting Over"

• The Involved NGO: The primary Israeli NGO directly involved in these operations is Starting Over founded by Sharon Cohen.
• The NGO's Stance: The organization claims to intervene alongside the Israeli military to "rescue and rehabilitate" donkeys, alleging that the animals suffer from psychological trauma, malnutrition, war injuries, or abandonment.
• Destination of the Animals: The donkeys are initially transferred to sanctuaries within Israeli territory. Subsequently, nearly 50 of them have been relocated to sanctuaries and zoos across Europe, including facility locations in France and Germany.

2. Confiscations by Israeli Authorities and COGAT

In the occupied territories, the removal of animals is typically executed formally by the military or COGAT (Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories), a unit within the Israeli Ministry of Defense.

• COGAT and Systematic Confiscations: COGAT executes systematic confiscations of animals in the West Bank under various administrative pretexts.
• The Auction Mechanism: COGAT forces detain Palestinian herders and confiscate their donkeys and livestock, alleging "illegal grazing" or "road hazard" issues. Subsequently, authorities impose exorbitant fines often reaching up to 2,000 shekels per animal. If shepherd families are unable to pay, COGAT organizes public auctions to permanently sell the animals to third parties or Israeli farms.
• In Gaza: Mass transfers of donkeys have been directly coordinated between military forces and animal welfare NGOs in combat zones, operating under the same umbrella of humanitarian fauna evacuation.

3. International Logistics: The "Donkey Flying Project"

To execute large-scale transfers out of the region, the NGO relies on an international network of commercial transit infrastructure, sanctuaries, and zoos:

• Air Transport Initiative: Under a program dubbed the "Donkey Flying Project," the NGO claims to have evacuated hundreds of donkeys, citing animal health and humanitarian grounds.
• European Transit Hubs: Investigative reports and local European media confirm that Liège Airport in Belgium has been used as a rapid transit point, where the animals remain for fewer than 24 hours before continuing their journey.
• Final Relocation: Many of these animals end up in shelters in France and zoos in Germany (such as Tiergarten Oppenheim), where they are ultimately given new European names.

4. Palestinian Denunciation: Destruction of Basic Infrastructure & Ethical Double Standards

For the population in Gaza, the confiscation of these animals is not viewed as an act of charity, but rather as a direct assault on community resilience.

Due to the complete blockade on fuel, donkeys and carts have become the sole remaining ambulances, clean water transports, food delivery mechanisms, and evacuation tools for thousands of displaced families.

• Lack of Due Process: Critics and human rights reports emphasize that these operations are carried out without consulting owners, offering financial compensation, or acknowledging that vulnerable families are being stripped of their primary means of daily survival and economic livelihood.
• Humanitarian Double Standard: Palestinian analysts criticize the stark contrast of allocating massive resources to airlift donkeys to Europe while the human population in Gaza remains trapped, facing famine and a lack of functional medical facilities. They argue that "animal welfare" rhetoric is used as a humanitarian facade to conceal the confiscation and theft of private property, depriving families of their last resource to transport water, move the injured, or carry food during an extreme crisis.

Am I the only one questioning this and finding these NGOs social media ads profoundly surreal? What kind of reasoning leads someone to establish an NGO to confiscate donkeys from the population in Gaza citing "psychological trauma from bombings" or animal malnutrition while humans suffer even worse in Gaza?

Is this a veiled strategy to harm the Palestinian population by stripping them of their means of subsistence under the guise of philanthropy? Depriving a family of an equine amid a fuel blockade not only destroys their sole method of transport and survival, but it is also cloaked in a rhetoric of moral superiority ("we will care for them better"). In doing so, they evade the reputational cost of an explicit military confiscation, disguising it as a "rescue mission."

Is this a mere propaganda exercise for Israel, or do the founders and staff of this NGO genuinely perceive themselves as good people, completely incapable of seeing such a simple logical contradiction? This situation transcends traditional definitions of dehumanization or racism: the donkeys are individualized, elevated and welcomed almost with the status of refugees even being granted European names while the Palestinian population is stripped of their very humanity, relegated to a level of value inferior to that of simple donkeys.

The deeper one digs into this topic, the more absurd and even cruel, the scenario becomes. Analyzing the logistics required to coordinate chartered flights to transport equines out of a war zone, where the civilian population lacks both exit corridors and basic essential supplies, and faces severe restrictions that make it nearly impossible, even for critically ill children, to get medical flights abroad, creates an overwhelming sense of cognitive dissonance. Celebrating the "humanitarian evacuation" of an animal on a commercial aircraft to Belgium, while, just a few miles away, a family is stripped of their only means to haul water, or transport their wounded, reveals a total lack of proportionality.