You can’t make this stuff up: Hamas has banned dog walking in Gaza…because dogs scare women and children.
When Yasmin Shath, a 28-year-old bank clerk, saw the notice on Facebook she froze.
Hamas, the Islamist militant group that controls the Gaza strip, had announced they were banning dog walking.
Ms Shath’s thoughts immediately turned to Raed, her family’s lumbering two-year-old German Shepherd who lives in the garage of their home in Gaza City.
“I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “Everyone tagged me in the notice on Facebook because they know I am a dog lover. I thought: this can’t be true.”
But it was. And in the three weeks since Hamas announced the ban dog owners in Gaza have been forced to keep their pets indoors, often in small apartments with no air conditioning amid the rising summer heat.
Ayman al-Batniji, a Hamas police spokesman, said the ban had been introduced because women and children were frightened of the animals.
“In recent weeks, the phenomenon of young men walking with their dogs in the streets has widely spread. It is neither of our culture nor of our traditions. Children and women feel scared when they see dogs,” he told The Telegraph. “Our duty is to maintain the safety of citizens.”
So let’s try to understand this. This kind of thing does not scare the women and children, nor compromise their safety:
This does:
Hamas may have banned dog walking, but their society has well and truly gone to the dogs.
In other news, the woman interviewed for this story is a bank clerk, who owns a house with a garage and large German Shepherd job that requires feeding and care. I guess she didn’t get the memo that all Gazans are supposed to portray themselves as starving, poverty-stricken people.
