Sana'a - Saba: Since October 7, 2023, the Zionist enemy army has been using dogs to chase and intimidate Palestinians, while today it is using dogs equipped with cameras to target Palestinians in Gaza.
In this context, media reports indicated that Tel Aviv University is running an "engineering war room" that is working to develop technology for the occupation army, including a live broadcast camera mounted on dogs used by a unit linked to deadly attacks against the people of Gaza.
The reports revealed the details of this work in a video clip published by the university on social media describing how a "war room" was opened on campus to support hundreds of academics and students who serve as reserves in the occupation army.
According to media reports, the video’s presenter, who is described as a “graduate” of the university, asks: “Did you know that since the beginning of the war there has been a war room operating on campus to take care of our fighters on the ground?”
The video notes that the highest percentage of active soldiers came from the Faculty of Engineering, indicating that an “engineering war room” was also established to devise solutions to the challenges facing soldiers on the front lines of the war.
The video goes on to describe how one of these innovations enabled Zionist soldiers in the Israeli army’s canine unit to broadcast live footage from the cameras worn by their dogs.
The video says: “We have developed a cheap and immediate solution, which did not exist until now, that allows live broadcasting from the dog’s camera to soldiers on the ground.”
In one of the continuing atrocities of the 14th month of the war of extermination on Gaza, in July 2024, a police dog attacked the young Palestinian man, Muhammad Bahar, 24 years old, who suffers from severe Down syndrome, during the occupation army’s invasion of the Shuja’iyya neighborhood east of Gaza City. Zionist soldiers left him to die under the fangs of the army dogs in his family’s home, and a week later his body was found decomposing.
In June, the elderly Palestinian woman, Dawlat al-Tanani, 68, recounted the details of a tragic scene, how a dog from the Israeli army gnawed at her flesh, smashed the bones of her right arm, and how she remained covered in blood for days, without any assistance of any kind, with the Israeli army preventing medical teams from reaching her for days.
In November 2023, the spokesman for the Israeli Prime Minister, Ofir Gendelman, published a video clip that he claimed documented the dogs of the occupation army chasing Hamas fighters inside their tunnels. However, skepticism about Gendelman’s claims came directly from the Yedioth Ahronoth correspondent, Yoav Zeitoun, who tweeted on “X” saying: “I conducted a preliminary examination that showed that the video dates back to Operation Protective Edge (the Israeli aggression on Gaza in 2014), or from a training session conducted in previous years.”
There are several types of dogs used by the enemy army, including the German Shepherd, the Belgian Shepherd, the Dutch Shepherd, and the Doberman. The enemy forces used them on the eve of the invasion of Gaza to chase Palestinian resistance members, whether inside tunnels or among the rubble of houses, to search for prisoners held by the resistance, and to detect mines.
Recently, a Zionist news website published a report about one of the dogs of that unit being captured in the Jabalia camp in the northern Gaza Strip after it was subjected to a well-planned trap by the resistance. The resistance was able to keep the dog's body and used it as an ambush for enemy soldiers when they returned to retrieve the dog's body.
Earlier, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said: The use of police dogs by the Zionist enemy army to attack Palestinian civilians during its military operations in the Gaza Strip, in addition to their use in terrorizing, mauling, and raping prisoners and detainees in Israeli detention centers, is a systematic and widely practiced behavior.
The observatory stated in a statement that its field team documented dozens of cases in which the Zionist forces used large police dogs during their military operations in the Gaza Strip, especially during raids on homes, hospitals and shelters.
It explained that the use of dogs against civilians takes several forms, including their use after placing surveillance cameras on their backs to explore homes and facilities before raiding them, while these dogs repeatedly attack and maul civilians during raids, without any intervention from members of the Zionist army who often order the dogs to attack civilians and then mock them.
This Zionist dog unit is called "Oketz", and it carried out brutal attacks against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The enemy forces in Gaza release the dogs of this unit; searching for tunnels, prisoners and weapons, and even searching for corpses.
The enemy forces do not use the dogs of the "Oketz" unit in the war inside Gaza, but they also release them against unarmed civilians, as happened with the elderly woman in Jabalia camp.
The dogs in the Oketz unit are equipped with surveillance cameras mounted on their backs, but it seems that the unit's dogs have let down their handlers. Since the beginning of the war on Gaza, more than 30 dogs have been killed by resistance fire, in addition to the wounded dogs that were taken out of service. The media of the Zionist enemy revealed the failure of the trained dogs in the "Oketz" unit of the occupation army to confront the huge dogs used by the Palestinian resistance elements in the Gaza Strip.
According to the Zionist newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, the dogs of the "Oketz" unit greatly help the soldiers of the occupation army in identifying dangerous areas where the resistance fighters hide, or where they plant weapons and missiles, and in many cases the dogs are killed while carrying out complex missions in built-up and dangerous areas.
The newspaper previously acknowledged the operational deaths of dozens of dogs in the fierce battles in Gaza.. noting that Hamas elements leave the large dogs chained inside the targeted houses to scare and mislead the army dogs, until the army carries out the operation to withdraw its forces from these areas.
It is noteworthy that "Oketz" means "bite" or "gnawing" in Hebrew, and it is a military unit affiliated with the "Marom" Brigade for special operations in the occupation army, and is considered one of the best trained dog units in the world.
The "Oketz" unit for trained dogs was established in the Israeli army in 1974 at the Sirkin base. The unit started with only 11 recruited dogs before expanding later to include hundreds. The unit began its work secretly during the seventies and eighties before it was officially announced in 1988, following a lightning operation in southern Lebanon.
The "Oketz" dogs use their sense of smell and hearing, their sharp teeth and their high fitness to attack, enter tight spaces, locate weapons and detect explosives.
According to Zionist reports, purebred dog puppies are brought from specialized farms in Belgium and Germany when they are no more than six months old. After being evaluated by experts, they are purchased at a cost of approximately ten or fifteen thousand dollars per puppy.
The puppies undergo a one-year rehabilitation course to improve their sense of smell, in addition to receiving the required vaccinations before they start working for another year with the special forces branches of the occupation army, such as "Duvdevan" and "Egoz", in preparation for their inclusion in the "Oketz" unit. According to Zionist reports, the training of a combat dog in the "Oketz" unit takes 17 months, during which he receives a full physical fitness program, supervised by professional trainers to develop his skills in exploration operations.
Marzah Al-Asal
M.M
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