Backstory: Donkey deliverance

From Tel Aviv's glittering skyline, it's a 30-minute drive to the other side of the world - the heart of the West Bank and this desperately poor Palestinian farming community where jobs are scarce and transport runs on four legs, not four-wheel-drive.

Here, almost every household has at least one donkey - for transport, trade, or plowing - but few treat their animals as anything more than a necessary tool. Today, though, the Dian Fossey of donkeys, Lucy Fensom, hopes to change that mentality just a bit.

I'm expecting the founder of Safe Haven for Donkeys in the Holy Land, the only donkey sanctuary in the Middle East, to be solemn, tough, maybe even cranky. So I'm taken aback when a bubbly blond Englishwoman - fully made up, looking glamorous in black (flecked with donkey hair) - rushes up to my Jeep in the muck of a local farmyard and launches into an animated, giggling conversation.

A former British Airways flight attendant, Ms. Fensom traded stilettos for rubber boots and manicures for muddy nails, almost by accident. On a visit in 2000 to Israel, she saw a badly treated donkey, and on impulse bought it for $200 (donkeys here can be had for as little as $20). After having it flown to a shelter in Britain, she arrived at the airport to face - to her astonishment - a horde of reporters.

"What are you going to do next?" one pressed. Caught by surprise, she answered hastily from the heart, "I want to start a sanctuary in Israel."

Donations poured in, and Fensom soon found herself back on a plane to Israel - in service not of passengers, but of donkeys. With no expertise, help, or even knowledge of the language, she took on a mission to bring modern Western animal rights to a traditional culture whereeven human rights aren't yet settled. Since then, the accidental activist has rescued 110 donkeys - abandoned, unwanted, or confiscated by local authorities. They're cared for at her four-acre sanctuary in a rural settlement east of Tel Aviv. She also conducts "mobile clinics" like the one in Azun today offering free veterinary service and advice aimed at raising esteem for the animal.

"There are times I wonder what I'm doing here," she admits with a grin.

Shivering in the cold, heels sinking into the mud, I can see what she means as we survey the farmyard seething with jostling donkeys and Palestinian men staring incredulously at the Western women in their midst.

***

Donkeys have been beasts of burden in the Middle East for millennia. A donkey carried a pregnant Mary to Bethlehem. Donkeys worked the land, carried people and produce, and are still in use in Israel and the Palestinian Territories as a vital, utilitarian means to an end. But donkeys are also victims of the most gruesome kinds of abuse, perhaps because they're barely seen as animals at all. Before Fensom arrived on the scene, no charity worked to protect them.

"I'm doing something no one else has bothered to," she says, without hint of self-congratulation. "Lots of people think I'm crazy, which is fair enough. Sometimes I think so myself. But I do believe, strange as it sounds, that some kind of higher force put me here to do this."

The big question, however, in a region where children are frequently caught in crossfire and the ill are refused permits to reach medical treatment: Why donkeys? Why these beasts with a reputation for stupidity and stubbornness?

"First, I believe that when you set an example of compassion for animals, you also breed compassion for humans," Fensom explains. "Second, by helping working donkeys at clinics, you're also helping their owners. These people's livelihoods depend on their donkeys, so it's in everyone's interests to keep them fit, healthy, and working. And the political situation isn't the animals' fault - so why should they suffer?

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