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- Former IDF soldier Ben Silberstein, who trained a dog named Zilly, died in a shootout with Palestinian militants.
- Silberstein took to Facebook to remember the dog, but also to highlight the death of the Palestinian woman.
- “The Israeli dog killed gets more media coverage than the 5-year-old Palestinian girl killed in Gaza,” he said.
Zilli, a nine-year-old male Belgian Malinois, served with Israel’s elite Yamam counter-terrorism police unit.
Local reports say the dog has been on duty in hundreds of operations, but last week was his last mission. Zilly died earlier this week in a shooting in Nablus in the West Bank.
Zili’s unit exchanged gunfire with three Palestinian militants, including Ibrahim Nabulsi, a senior member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the BBC reported.
Nabulsi was killed along with two other militants, while 40 Palestinians were wounded. The dog is the sole cause of Israel.
His bravery was celebrated in Israel. “Zili was part of the unit, admired and professional. He will be missed in the unit, by dog handlers and by the fighters who accompanied him on many operational missions,” Prime Minister Yair Lapid said in a statement to i24 News.
Ben Silberstein, a 29-year-old former IDF soldier who trained Zilin, took to Facebook to remember the dog and also to highlight the moral ambiguity of handling dog deaths in the wider context of Israeli-Palestinian civilian casualties. Conflict.
“I have to admit that I had mixed feelings about the story at first – on the one hand, I am saddened by the loss of a dog that I have known since the day he was born, and his name is being talked about by so many people and I am proud,” he wrote.
But he added, “Of course I’m a dog person, but I’m also a people person. I’m saddened by the death of a 5-year-old girl. I’m saddened by the indifference to her death.”
Silberstein was apparently referring to the death of five-year-old Alaa Qadum, who was playing outside a relative’s home in the Gaza Strip when an Israeli airstrike struck and killed her in the street, The New York Times reported.
Earlier this month, she was among the casualties of the fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip. It started when the Israeli army killed the commander of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The militants responded by firing hundreds of rockets into Israel, most of which were fired at the Iron Dome defense system.
After three days of fighting, 49 Palestinian civilians are dead. 30 people were killed in the attack by Israel, 17 civilians, including 3 girls, one boy and four women. Haaretz reports that Palestinian rockets have killed 12 children, including 19 children.
“The reality we live in is that the Israeli dog killed gets more media coverage than the 5-year-old Palestinian girl killed in Gaza,” he wrote on Facebook.
“I loved Zilin,” Silberstein wrote: “I know he did a lot of good things to protect me and my friends both in and out of the army. Even now – I hope he will help me raise an important issue. I hope he can discuss it and he will protect me and my friends better in the future. The memory May it be a blessing.
“She was an innocent little girl.”
Alaa Qadum, the grandmother of a Palestinian girl, carries her body in Gaza City. August 5.
Ashraf Amra/Reuters
Ala Qadum was killed in an Israeli airstrike on August 5 at around 4:30 PM in the Shujaiya neighborhood of Gaza City.
According to Mohammed Abu Salameh, director of Al Shifa Hospital, Alawa died instantly after hitting her forehead, chest and right leg.
“She was an innocent little girl,” her grandfather told the New York Times. “She was throwing rockets at the border? She was a girl who wanted to see her whole life ahead of her.”
To stop the conflict, we have to humanize the victims, said a former army soldier.
In an interview with Insider, Silberstein said he created his Facebook page to draw attention to what he believes should be done to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“We need to talk about the damage on both sides of this conflict,” he said. It’s just a way.”
He added that it is important to focus on what it means to live in perpetual conflict. He described communities as “wounded by anxiety”, suffering from the knowledge that they or their relatives could be killed at any moment.
Silberstein now works for the Geneva Initiative, an Israeli-Palestinian coalition to end the conflict.
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