Gaza: Israeli army systematically uses police dogs to attack Palestinian civilians
Israeli soldiers with dogs in Gaza
Euro-Med Monitor reports on 27 June 2014:
The Israeli military is using police dogs to systematically attack Palestinian civilians during military operations in the Gaza Strip. The dogs are also used to intimidate, beat, and sexually assault prisoners and detainees in Israeli detention facilities.
Numerous incidents of Israeli forces using large police dogs during military operations in the Strip have been recorded by the Euro-Med Monitor field team, particularly during raids of homes, shelters, and medical facilities.
These ways include checking out sites before raids without having to enter them, by strapping surveillance cameras to dogs’ backs, as well as allowing dogs to repeatedly maul or otherwise attack civilians, without any interference from members of the Israeli arm. In fact, according to testimonies, Israeli forces often order the dogs to attack civilians, and then mock the victims of the attacks.
The Israeli army’s systematic use of dogs during home raids suggests that the recent attack on Dawlat Al-Tanani, an elderly woman in Gaza City whose mauling by a dog was caught on video and went viral, is not an isolated incident. Rather, her case came to light because it was captured on camera and published.
Sixty-year-old Al-Tanani, who was attacked on 14 May by an Israeli army dog in her home in the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, told the Euro-Med Monitor team:
“I was sleeping in my house, which I refused to leave after the Israeli army entered the Jabalia camp. I woke up to the sound of Israeli forces breaking through the wall and into my home. A dog wearing a camera on its back attacked me in a matter of seconds, biting my shoulder and eventually reaching my bone with its fangs. He dragged me outside. As I screamed loudly, the soldiers laughed and offered me no assistance or medical attention. When the dog kept biting me while I was screaming, a relative who was present in the house came to my aid and shoved the dog with his crutch.