WEST BANK: Settlers train attack dogs ahead of Palestinian state declaration

Record ID: 353030

  • Title: WEST BANK: Settlers train attack dogs ahead of Palestinian state declaration
  • Date: 1st September 2011
  • Summary: ETZION JUNCTION, WEST BANK (AUGUST 30, 2011) (REUTERS) SETTLER DOG TRAINER MIKE GUZOVSKY TRAINING DOG BY HAVING HIM JUMP ON A CAR DOG DIGGING SOIL (SOUNDBITE) (English) SETTLER DOG TRAINER MIKE GUZOVSKY, SAYING: "People are much more aware of the potential threat to them in their homes throughout Judea and Samaria and throughout Israel for that matter, and I think clea
  • Embargoed: 16th September 2011 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: West bank, West bank
  • City:
  • Country: Palestinian Territories
  • Topics: Crime,Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVAE2LMHY853F082JQF5Y3XC88B2
  • Story Text: A Jewish settler group is training attack and guard dogs and supplying them to Jewish settlements ahead of a planned Palestinian bid for statehood at the United Nations.
    In a video made by the "Civilian Dog Handlers Battalion of Judea and Samaria", dogs are seen attacking a Palestinian "infiltrator", and a Palestinian attacking a Jewish resident in a simulated video.
    The purpose of the video, dog trainer and settler leader Mike Guzovsky says, is to recruit volunteers to train dogs and donate money for their organization.
    Guzovsky, also known as Yekutiel Ben Yaacov, is a well known activist in Israel's ultra-nationalist right, and was a follower of anti-Arab Jewish Rabbi Meir Kahane, assassinated by an Arab in New York in 1990.
    Kahane started the anti-Arab movement Kach which campaigned for the transfer of Arabs from lands under Israeli control. Kach was outlawed in 1996 by the Israeli government following the massacre of 29 Palestinian worshippers by a Jewish settler once affiliated with Kach. In the mid 90's, American-Israeli Guzovsky headed the "Kahane Chai" ('Kahane is Alive' in Hebrew) movement, an offshoot of Kach.
    Guzovsky said that in light of mass Palestinian protests scheduled to be held across the West Bank and Israel, Jewish settlers are worried for their safety.
    "People are much more aware of the potential threat to them in their homes throughout Judea and Samaria and throughout Israel for that matter, and I think clearly the events in September are prompting more and more people to be concerned about their security," Guzovsky told Reuters Television.
    Guzovsky says that dogs are trained for months before his organization provides dogs, free of charge to West Bank settlements and communities within Israel.
    "These dogs are trained to attack upon command, they're trained to attack a threat. If there's somebody that comes carrying a knife, or carrying a handgrenade or carrying a gun, trying to sneak into a Jewish town at night, these dogs are trained to seek and find that threat and to neutralise them," Guzovsky says.
    At the U.N. General Assembly in New York in September, the Arab League plans to seek full U.N. membership for a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip.
    Palestinians want their state to encompass the Israeli-occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, from which Israel withdrew settlers in 2005, with East Jerusalem as their capital. Israel captured all three areas in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
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