I respectfully protest the Israeli government's plan to bring gambling on horse racing to Israel.

 

Experience in the U.K. and the U.S. has shown that this industry involves enormous cruelty to animals, including breeding thousands more horses than race, the majority born to be killed.

  

Every aspect of a racehorse's life involves cruelties, from beginning a harsh training regimen before their bones have hardened and when they are vulnerable to fractures from excessive weight being placed on them, to being drugged so they can be forced to race even when injured.

  

The injuries they sustain include bleeding in the lungs, chronic gastric ulcers, and fractured limbs. When not racing, horses are confined to a stall for up to 23 hours of the day, deprived of the herd contact and freedom of movement that would enhance their physical and mental health. Except in the case of champions who are used for breeding, when a horse can no longer race, at as young an age as four years, they are killed or sold from one owner to another in a downward spiral of abuse.

   

Judaism is against gambling, saying it causes one person to receive money to the detriment of another. The cost to society of gambling can also not be ignored. At least 60,000 people in England are gambling addicts, their families made to suffer from the loss of income, drugs, crime, and other problems that accompany addictions. In the U.S., approximately 5 ½ million adults are considered problem or pathological gamblers. At greatest risk are young people.

Pathological and problem gamblers in the United States cost our society approximately $5 billion per year and an additional $40 billion in lifetime costs for productivity reductions, social services, and creditor losses.…these calculations are inadequate to capture the intrafamilial costs of divorce and family disruption associated with problem and pathological gambling.

— A 1999 Report to the National Gambling Impact Study Commission by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago

Israel can find a way to reap profits other than by exploiting innocent animals.