Army temporarily halts use of dogs in West Bank
Internal IDF inquiry into a dog attack on an unarmed Palestinian found soldiers to have acted immorally, unprofessionally
Mitch Ginsburg is the former Times of Israel military correspondent.
The commander of the IDF’s West Bank Division temporarily suspended the use of the army’s canine unit Thursday, after completing an investigation into the recently publicized incident in which a group of soldiers set an attack dog on a Palestinian stone-thrower in December.
The army found the soldiers’ conduct to be professionally unacceptable and morally mistaken.
Brig. Gen. Tamir Yedai, the head of the West Bank Division, termed the incident “grave” and said that the manner in which the dogs were used “testifies to a low professional level” and “moral behavior that is unbecoming.”
On December 23 in the afternoon a group of Palestinians from the village of Beit Umar, north of Hebron, clashed with army soldiers in an area near the settlement of Karmei Zur. Hamza Abu-Hashem, 16, threw stones at the soldiers, and an army dog handler, from the canine unit Oketz, was instructed to unleash his dog on Abu-Hashem, who was caught in the dog’s jaws and ridiculed and chastised by the soldiers.
The incident was reported upon by the B’Tselem human rights organization at the time – and likely filmed by the soldiers in the field – but only fully acted upon when the former, far-right former MK Michael Ben-Ari uploaded video footage of the incident onto his Facebook page.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlQ1WF2cCvo
“The soldiers are teaching the little terrorist a lesson. Share it! So that every little terrorist who plans to harm our soldiers will learn there is a price,” Ben Ari wrote.
Yedai, who submitted the results of the investigation to the GOC Central Command, Maj. Gen. Nitzan Alon, found that the dogs were used in defiance of the orders issued by the brigade commander. He stated that the dogs, when used properly, play an important role in combatting terror in the region.
Nonetheless, due to the severity of the incident, Yedai has ordered troops throughout the West Bank to temporarily cease working with canines, until the professional guidelines “are relearned.”
Additionally, he ordered that the dogs be used operationally only with the authorization of a brigade commander, holding the rank of colonel, and said that disciplinary action would be taken against the soldiers.
The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit stressed that a Military Police investigation, probing the possibility of criminal behavior, is ongoing.
B’Tselem, which said it has filed complaints against the army approximately 10 times for the use of dogs against civilians, wrote in a statement that the army’s “internal inquiry into such instances focuses only on how the dogs were used and not on whether they should have been used at all.”
