Conflict Blotter

This from today’s Maariv newspaper:

While hundreds of refugees are abandoning their homes and fleeing the Gaza Strip, their house pets and farm animals are being left behind to die of hunger and thirst. Hedva, from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Jerusalem, said she had heard reports from IDF soldiers about animals that had been abandoned in the Gaza Strip and were suffering from neglect.

One of the soldiers said his unit released a donkey that was tied with a half-meter rope to the iron gate of an abandoned house. The donkey was covered with flies and was little more than skin and bones, because it had not eaten or drunk for days. Other soldiers found gazelles, deer, peacocks, ducks, geese and chickens, all locked up in the courtyard of a house, starving and neglected. In this case also, the soldiers released the animals to give them a chance of survival.

In many cases the soldiers cannot help fear they are endangering themselves. In one case the soldiers found a farm with thousands of hungry and neglected chickens in coops, without food or water. Each cage measured 30 by 30 centimeters, with no floor, and contained three or four chickens, some of them dead or injured, and others with feathers pecked out by the others.

The condition of the dogs is also very bad. On many occasions soldiers found hungry and neglected dogs in courtyards of houses which were occupied. Because the owners were there the soldiers were forbidden to intervene. As one soldier recalled: “There are enormous numbers of dogs there. In every farm dozens of dogs are tethered with leads of two meters or less. On of the dogs, which was suffering from malnutrition, had dug itself a hole to shelter from the heat.”