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She's in stubborn defense of donkeys

In the Mideast, the beast of burden takes abuse from both sides. But one woman is helping them recover.

By SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN
Published February 20, 2006

	[Times photo: John Pendygraft]
	Lucy Fensom gets some love from one of 98 donkeys she keeps at Safe Haven for Donkeys in the Holy Land, a 4-acre farm near the Israeli city of Netanya.

MOSHAV GAN YOSHIYYA, Israel - There's Mabel, her eyes gouged out with a knife. And Holly, her muzzle still scarred from barbed wire. And Jordy, his tail and ears hacked off.

It's tough being a donkey in the Holy Land.

In searing heat and freezing rain, they plod along, pulling heavy carts or bearing massive loads on their short, sturdy frames. They may be the world's cheapest, most reliable form of transportation, fueled for hours by nothing more than water and barley straw.

Why, then, are so many donkeys abused and neglected?

"To Jews, they're a symbol of Arabs and the enemy," Lucy Fensom says. "To Arabs, they're low-class, stupid animals."

For the past five years, the former British Airways flight attendant has run one of the Mideast's more unusual charities - Safe Haven for Donkeys in the Holy Land. Here, on a 4-acre farm near the Israeli city of Netanya, dozens of donkeys have found refuge from a sometimes cruel, uncaring world.

Fensom knows all 98 by name, cooing over even the oldest and orneriest as if they were newborns in a maternity ward. Along with her husband and a small staff, she treats their wounds and gives them their medicine wrapped in jam sandwiches to mask the taste.

Where others see a mere beast of burden, Fensom sees a creature that plays a small, but important, role in Judaism and Christianity. Jews believe the Messiah will come on a donkey. The Bible says one carried Mary to the stable. And as legend has it, all donkeys have borne cross-shaped markings on their back since Jesus rode one on his final trip into Jerusalem.

Fensom realizes not everyone shares her passion.

"They say, "Why are you helping donkeys? Why aren't you helping people, especially in this part of the world where people are suffering so much?' I'm not madly religious, but I think I was chosen to do this. Just because people suffer, animals shouldn't, too. It was Gandhi who said, "You can judge a nation by the way it treats its animals."'

Though she is a Christian born in Britain, Fensom lived for a time on a kibbutz in Israel. It was while doing volunteer work at Jerusalem's animal shelter that she acquired her first donkey - one that had been abandoned by nomadic Bedouins and left tied up with wire. She named him Donk.

Fensom eventually returned to Britain and took an airline job, leaving Donk at the shelter. But the staff failed to care for him - "his hooves grew really long" - so she appealed for help from the World Society for the Protection of Animals.

Intrigued, the organization paid for the donkey's trip to London aboard an El Al jumbo jet. Ears sticking out of the crate, he was greeted by a horde of journalists and became an instant celebrity. Donk spent a happy year in Cambridge before succumbing to a heart attack, the result of "having worked so hard in his youth," Fensom says.

In 2000, she quit her job, moved back to Israel and founded Safe Haven on a rented farm. Her first rescue was Lucy, a foal whose mother had been killed as they tried to cross a busy highway.

Others soon followed: Chico, another orphan that had to be hand-fed and now "acts like a human.' ' And Matilda, who came from a "really horrible neighborhood" in Haifa. Donkeys store fat in their backs, but Matilda had more fatty lumps than normal - she belonged to drug addicts who fed her nothing but oil.

Some donkeys are so badly injured Fensom doesn't hesitate to euthanize them. Others, like Salaam, recover against strong odds.

Hit by a car, Salaam was initially rescued by a devout Muslim, who fashioned a splint in a vain effort to save the animal's mangled left front leg.

"This donkey was so young and feisty, and this man had clearly done so much to help him, so who was I as a foreigner to put him down?" Fensom says. Instead, a veterinarian amputated the leg, and Salaam, safe at the refuge, got together with Muriel one wintery night.

The result: little Moonbeam.

"That just proves," Fensom says, "that a donkey with three legs is able to have quality of life."

The charity is now well enough known that Fensom gets calls not just from ordinary citizens but official sources as well.

Israeli soldiers recently asked her to take two donkeys with severe harness sores. (She refused, but helped the young Palestinian riders pad the harnesses.) And Mabel, of the gouged-out eyes, came to Safe Haven after a call from a European group that monitors the tense relations between Jews and Arabs in the West Bank city of Hebron.

People on both sides of the Mideast conflict mistreat donkeys, Fensom says, but they are more apt to be used - and hence abused - in poor Palestinian areas than in richer Israel. Donkeys are a common sight in the Gaza Strip and small West Bank villages, where thousands haul everything from vegetables to firewood to furniture.

Since last summer, Fensom has run weekly outreach clinics in two Palestinian towns. She, her Israeli vet and two Arab-speaking assistants give advice along with free harnesses and worm medicine.

"Israeli Jews just laughed at me - they said, "You're mad. You think they're going to care about animals and listen to you?' But I'm so proud to prove them wrong. These people appreciate our help. The donkeys are their means of livelihood."

Concerned that an Israeli charity might have trouble operating in Arab areas, Fensom has registered Safe Haven in the United Kingdom. Most donations come from Britain, where Mr. Toad and Peter Rabbit reflect an anthropomorphic love for animals that is rarely found in the Middle East.

The charity has a base of 4,000 supporters, many of whom pay 48 pounds - about $96 - to "adopt" a donkey for a year.

In an ideal world, Fensom, 35, would rent donkeys at a nominal fee to Palestinians who could use them to make a living. For now, she and her Israeli-born husband, Adi, worry about rising costs and losing the lease on their farm, which sits near a new highway that could spur rampant development.

Fensom also frets that her 2-year-old son, Robert, will grow up more fluent in Hebrew than in English. One day, she says, the family may resettle in Britain.

But not until they find someone who adores donkeys as much as they do.

Oblivious to the mud and donkey dung caked to her rubber boots, Fensom strokes Harry Potter's ears while Primrose gently nudges her from behind.

"How can you not love this? Despite all the abuse and torture, the amazing thing about donkeys is that they forget."

The charity's Web site is www.safehaven4donkeys.org

[Last modified February 20, 2006, 04:01:08]