Video: Israeli soldiers attack Palestinian teen with dog

Soldiers take a teenager into custody. This teenager was bitten by one of the soldiers' dogs. Screen grab from the second video below.

A video has emerged online showing Israeli soldiers threatening a Palestinian teenager with their dogs, one of which bit the boy, who ended up in the hospital. The army has promised an investigation, but our Observer says that’s not enough – she believes it should put a full stop to using dogs against Palestinians in the West Bank.

The video recently came to the public’s attention when a right-wing activist and former member of Israel’s parliament, Michael Ben Ari, posted it to social media with the comment “The soldiers taught the little terrorist a lesson!” He quickly took it down, but not before it had been reposted many times. The video, which was filmed from a camera mounted on one of the soldiers’ helmets, was filmed back in December, in Beit Umar, 10 kilometres north of Hebron. In the video, two soldiers can be seen scaring a teenager with their dogs. A man’s voice is heard saying, “Who’s a chicken, eh? Who’s a chicken?” Another man’s voice orders a dog to “get him”.

The teenager in the video is 16-year-old Hamzeh Abu Hashem, who was arrested on December 23 for throwing stones during confrontations with soldiers. After being treated for dog bites at a hospital, he was transferred to prison and sentenced to six months’ time.

The Israeli military stopped using dogs during demonstrations in 2012 after a protester was severely injured, but continues to do so during arrests.

“There is a clear pattern to these repeated dog attacks”

Back in December, one of our cameramen filmed all the lead-up to this incident, but after a while he was prevented from getting close to the soldiers, so he wasn’t able to film the moment the dog attacked the boy. However, another witness we interviewed, who was standing much closer, told us that the voices that can be heard in this video that are taunting the boy are indeed those of the soldiers.

This video filmed by B'Tselem activists shows the lead-up to the incident shown in the first video. Soldiers accompanied by two dogs can be seen leading the teenager away. 

Unfortunately, this is far from an isolated case. In the past few years, we’ve gathered lots of testimony and videos that show other similar dog attacks. There is a clear pattern. The dog is taken off his leash and set on the person that the soldiers want to arrest, to prevent them from getting away. The dog bites them, and doesn’t let go. They are very strong, and capable of holding down a grown person. The dog’s handler then arrives – which can take a few seconds, which is long when a dog is biting you – and removes the dog. In some cases, the animal doesn’t obey and the handler has to use an electric shocker to make him let go.

These dogs are well-trained, but they’re not robots; they can’t be kept under full control. There have been multiple cases where a dog is let off its leash, and attacks the wrong person – in one incident, a dog attacked an 88-year-old woman!

In any case, we don’t believe dogs should be used at all; this technique is dangerous and immoral. Whenever we complain about these attacks to the IDF – and we don’t complain about every incident, due to lack of resources on our part – we only get responses about specific problems with the dogs’ handling. They never address the initial decision to use dogs in the first place, which goes higher up, to the IDF commanders.

After the video started circulating online, the army issued a statement promising an investigation, adding that “it would be a mistake to draw conclusions before the end of the investigation – however, there is no doubt that this is a serious incident that does not match what is expected of our soldiers. We will act to prevent such incidents from occurring in the future.”