An IDF soldier and dog on patrol in Hebron. Photograph: Hazem Bader/AFP/Getty Images
Military dogs involved in attacks on Palestinian civilians – including children – are likely to have been exported from European countries, investigation finds
Warning: readers may find some of the details in this piece distressing
It was only seconds after soldiers entered the Hashash family’s home in the Balata refugee camp in the West Bank that the dog attack began. As military raids rolled out across her neighbourhood one morning in February 2023, Amani Hashash says she took her four children into a bedroom. When she heard Israeli military coming into their home she called out that they were inside and posed no threat.
Moments later the bedroom door was opened and a large, unmuzzled dog launched itself into the room, plunging its teeth into her three-year-old son, Ibrahim, who was asleep in her lap.
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Israeli soldiers from the Oketz canine unit at a training base in southern Israel. Photograph: Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images
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Comment of our own:
So typical of Humans to turn “man’s best friend” into a killing machine. The dogs, as it says here, have no understanding of what they are made to do – and are as much victims as those they are set upon. Disgusting …
For many, the little humble donkey is quite simply a neglected, but essential, work tool for its owner. The brick carrier; the tourist transporter, the list is endless. For some, after a life of neglect and suffering, their days unfortunately end with them being sold, barbarically slaughtered, and becoming a ‘suppler of skins’ for use in the traditional Chinese ‘Egiao’ medicine market.
In this post we are simply giving pictures of the different working situations that donkeys find themselves in at different locations around the world. We also reference SPANA, – a British charity which is helping animal owners by providing free veterinary care and veterinary advice.
One of 500 abandoned dogs at AID – SHIN in Mijas, ready for adoption. Credit: EWN
being of pets across the country but has ended up, in the eyes of many, worsening an already bad situation. Since its introduction, animal abandonment has only increased, and animal rights are worse than ever.
Local management challenges, lack of consultation with professionals, and a perceived ideological bent: with more than 30 million pets in Spain, it was inevitable that a one-size-fits-all approach wasn’t going to work for everyone. One in three households owns at least one companion animal, and not everyone can afford the changes. In Spain, an estimated 6 million pets remain unregistered, posing potential public health risks. In 2023, 285,000 dogs and cats were abandoned, highlighting the need for stricter regulations. But at what financial cost?
The new law sets standards for pet ownership and treatment, including a ban on leaving pets alone for more than 72 hours (24 hours for dogs) and prohibiting their habitual confinement in spaces like terraces, balconies, storage rooms, or vehicles. Sales of dogs, cats, and ferrets are now restricted to authorised, licensed breeders, excluding some intermediaries and private individuals.
Breeds classified as potentially dangerous, such as Rottweilers, remain subject to strict handling rules, including licences, short leashes, and muzzles. Notably, exemptions exist for working animals, like the Spanish Legion’s goat, which can still parade on October 12, or mules and oxen in living nativity scenes, unless their owners register them as pets in the new mandatory pet registry.
Despite its intentions, the law faces hurdles that hurt. Councils are tasked with collecting stray and abandoned animals and providing 24-hour veterinary services, but many lack the funds and resources to comply. As well, local governments must manage feral cat colonies, requiring trained volunteers or staff to capture, vaccinate, deworm, sterilise, and return the cats – a costly mandate that many areas struggle to meet.
If a pet owner now wants help, they have to go to a vet. For many who already owned a pet from before the introduction of the law, vet prices are not an option. According to Fabienne Paques of AID – SHIN, an animal rescue in the Malaga Region with 500 abandoned dogs and 150 cats, ‘A dog needs a chip, and it needs a rabies shot. Before you could go to a hardware shop for that. Now, it costs a lot to go to a vet. Before it was €20, and now it’s €80. To get some dogs castrated or sterilised (as per the new law), it can cost up to €500. The new law considered pets things, items, not animals.’ The shelter has recently had an inordinate amount of pets abandoned at their gates. ‘People don’t know what to do with them. The new law brought a lot of negativity. They say it’s not true, but it’s an absolute disaster.’
Dilemma under new animal rights law of what to do with existing pets?
A few kilometres away in the Miralmonte urbanisation, neighbours are up in arms about one of their neighbours who has several macaws and dogs which appear to be breeding amongst themselves. According to the neighbours, the animals make a terrible noise, and their droppings are attracting rats. The owner at the centre of the situation used to have a pet shop in nearby Coín but has been stopped from selling animals from the store she inherited from her parents. So, now, unable to afford to put them down, she keeps the animals at home. She cannot sell the animals by law, and the local police are reluctant to do anything as they can see both sides of the argument.
Critics of the law, including Professor Christian Gortázar, argue the law lacks scientific grounding and was driven by ideological motives, potentially threatening livestock industries by overly humanising pets. They also claim that there in no provision for pet owners with less resources to cope with the new rules.
José Luis López-Schümmer, president of the Artemisan Foundation, notes the law’s inconsistency with European legislation, which excludes wildlife from welfare regulations. The law also exempts animals raised for food, scientific experiments, bullfighting, or hunting, countering claims that it severely impacts the economy.
A year and a half after its enactment, the law’s limited consensus, even among its proposing parties, and incomplete framework have hindered its full application. Its true long-term impact – positive or negative – remains to be seen, as further data and regulatory clarity are needed to assess this polarising legislation. What is certain, in 2025, is that the situation with the welfare of animals is nowhere near being improved.
Now, unable to buy a dog from a pet shop, ACE – SHIN have a broad selection just looking for a home. Check out their website as they can arrange adoptions in may countries around Europe.
Charity Worldwide Veterinary Service launches Global Veterinary Challenge Award with BVA to allow scholars to design bold and impactful international projects.
£100,000 award scheme to encourage students to devise big, bold and impactful international animal welfare projects was launched today (12 June).
WVS-organised sterilisation campaign in the Andes, Ecuador.
UK veterinary charity Worldwide Veterinary Service (WVS) and the BVA joined forces to launch the Global Veterinary Challenge Award.
As part of the scheme, launched as part of BVA Live in Birmingham, students will be encouraged and empowered to design a project that champions an international animal welfare issue, and win the cash to help its launch.
Solutions
Students are being encouraged to develop an innovative, sustainable solution to a pressing global animal welfare issue close to their hearts.
The Global Veterinary Challenge Panel will judge the entries, with the winning project allocated funding up to £100,000 and the successful team or individuals working alongside WVS to bring it to life.
To apply, students must submit a proposal for any species that champions a welfare need in an effective, scalable and sustainable way and any location worldwide.
Work together’
Chief executive and founder of WVS, Luke Gamble, said: “The profession is most powerful when we work together as team. Most of us have causes we care about and sometimes it is incredibly hard to find a way to champion them. This challenge solves that.
“The winning idea will not only have funding, but full support to drive forward a project that will make an impactful difference. I couldn’t be more excited to see what comes in – remember, anyone can do easy – applicants need to think bold and big.”
And BVA president Elizabeth Mullineaux said: “At the BVA, our members care passionately about supporting and enhancing animal welfare and for many, myself included, it’s what propelled us to join this fantastic profession.”
‘Outstanding opportunity’
She added: “The WVS Global Challenge Award represents an outstanding opportunity for vet students to dive straight in and deliver real world welfare change for animals across the globe, all before they’ve even graduated.
“We’re looking forward to seeing the project ideas as they come in and the incredible impact this award will have, for both animals but also the students taking part.”
Top tourist destinations in Egypt are blighted by animal abuse, with horses and camels starved, beaten and left to die in squalor, an investigation has uncovered.
MailOnline has seen exclusive footage revealing the extent of cruelty inflicted upon animals by guides offering visitors tours of historic sites, documented in harrowing detail by animal rights group PETA.
Investigators said they found the bodies of animals dumped behind the great Pyramids of Giza on a daily basis, with horses and camels worked to the bone in miserable conditions.
Horrific footage showed euthanised animals, broken by long hours in 35C heat, left out to rot as crows and stray dogs pick at their carcasses. Some – starved to the bone and exhausted – are visibly still breathing, but too weak to get up.
More than 14 million people visit the Pyramids of Giza every year, bringing trade and tourism to Cairo. But with this number set to double by 2030, rights groups are calling for tourists to avoid exploitative traps that come at the expense of many lives.
Unsettling video taken in Cairo between 2023 and 2024 showed horses eating rubbish from skips or the ground, not properly looked after by the tour operators
Many appeared thin, struggling to stand on their own and struggling under the weight and heat of thick saddles and blinkered masks.
Ribs protruded from animals with dirty manes and mottled skin, swarmed by flies in undisclosed areas around the city.
Across from them, about a dozen animals lined up to take the next group of tourists around historic sites.
Open wounds attracted midges, causing horses to squirm and writhe in pain with evidence of medicine or treatment.
Those filmed still had saddles on their back, expected to continue working under the strain.
Others twitched as they lay on the ground with ropes embedded in their skin, eyes half shut as they tried to brush off flies with limp gestures.
Bloodied ‘handles’ made from twine appeared to have been poked through the bodies of abused animals for easier control and manipulation.
PETA also documented how horses were whipped while being forced to pull carriages for tourists in Cairo.
Thin horses baring their teeth are seen outside the famous pyramids being beaten as tourists watch on unmoved.
Various draft animals are used to ferry visitors around the historic sites for a fee.
Jason Baker, PETA Senior Vice President, told MailOnline: ‘No decent person would dream of climbing onto a horse or camel if they knew that behind every ride is a disturbingly cruel industry that physically abuses these sensitive animals up until the moment their exhausted bodies give out.’
He said that their investigation had shown how ‘half-starved’ animals at the Giza pyramids are ‘literally worked to death’.
If they collapse first, they are ‘whipped mercilessly to force them to get up and pull carriages or carry tourists’.
‘Most suffer from wounds, mange, and painful scarring and receive no treatment, then when they’re no longer considered useful, they’re dumped like rubbish or dragged to a slaughterhouse, where their throats are slit while they’re fully conscious,’ he assessed.
‘PETA’s shocking findings – and the Egyptian government’s shameful attempt to cover them up – sends a clear message to all tourists: avoid all animal rides like the plague.’
PETA’s investigation showed how camels, suffering from open wounds and infection, were also beaten in front of tourists.
Animals are seen with ropes through their faces and chains around their bodies, with loose skin hanging from bloodied lacerations.
The animal rights group said its investigators had come across dead camels with their throats ‘slashed’.
Footage showed camels limp or dead, some bleeding out, by the sides of roads as bystanders walked past reactionless.
One live animal was left to sit next to the corpse of another slowly bleeding into the street with a large gash in its neck.
Others, thin and weak from malnourishment, were seen being beaten with sticks to get up or dragged into trailers unwillingly on thick ropes.
Camels face a dire existence in Cairo; when no longer deemed useful, many are sold on to slaughterhouses.
Death in these abattoirs is a painful, grisly affair: footage showed live camels fully conscious as other working animals were slain, cut by the neck and left to bleed out on a cold, bare floor.
In an instant, another is approached from the front and slashed. But death takes some time. The animal cries out what it can as it writhes on the floor in pain.
One tries desperately to get up in its last act before collapsing and falling on its side. The chorus of screams continue around the building, bodies twitching for long, painful seconds before going limp.
For many thousands of animals, this will be the only life they know. Tourism contributes some 10-15 per cent of the Egyptian economy, incentivising keen entrepreneurs to cater their businesses to tourists.
But the scale and conditions of such abuse only exist due to lack of enforced regulation and the willingness of tourists to pay for such tours.
Video on Page
PETA revealed the lengths some guides will go to to stop the horrifying shadow of their operations coming out in their harrowing exposé.
Video showed how a man organising camel and horse rides called the police on a visitor after he began taking photographs.
Police, along with a representative from the Ministry of Antiquities and Tourism, detained the man for nearly an hour and a half, PETA reported.
They allegedly ‘intimidated’ him, insisting he clear his memory card, before confiscating his camera.
On camera, the man is questioned over his documentation of the abuses.
Someone out of view says: ‘When you take photos coming to the pyramids, you can take photos of the pyramids, of the second… of the sphinx.
‘But it’s not allowed for anybody to take photos of the policemen, of the cart, of the camel, of the horses.’
The man apologises and is told: ‘Whether you are sorry or not, you did something wrong. You broke the law.’
They then tell him they are going to delete all of his photos ‘for the whole visit’ in a disturbing cover-up.
Egypt does have special rules about taking photos of historic sites due to potential damage from flash photography.
But the Ministry of Antiquities and Tourism relaxed more general laws about street photography in 2022 after tourists and influencers complained about officials shutting down their photo opportunities.
Taking photos of children is still not allowed, taking photos of adults requires written consent and taking photos of police or military is generally unadvised.
There is no clear law pertaining to the photography of animals.
The man is seen on camera asking where they are taking him. He is told he will be taken to the Ministry.
Another off camera denies working for the government, claiming to be a tour operator.
Millions travel to Egypt every year to enjoy a rich history today synonymous with the height of culture and civilisation.
But behind the scenes, a sinister reality exists in stark antithesis to the wonders of human brilliance all around.
New footage shows a pressing need for reform and awareness in a country where attempts to expose the truth are often repressed with force.
But until Egypt shows willing to tackle the issue, the industry will be propped up by tourists bringing demand.
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And yet some – indeed too many – are totally blind to what is going on right in front of them ..
World Animals Voice 