Two Israeli Soldiers Punished for Shooting Camel — and Filming It
An Israeli soldier who fatally shot a camel — and his friend who filmed the November incident — were sentenced to prison and stripped of their rank.
The two soldiers, from the Israel Defense Forces’ elite Duvdevan special operations unit, were convicted in military court and were not identified in Israeli media accounts.
According to Ynet, the shooter was convicted of illegal use of a weapon and animal abuse and sentenced to four months in prison. His friend was sentenced to two months in prison.
The soldiers, who were on leave at the time, were driving past the camel when the driver shot it. The two were arrested on Dec. 7.
“The sentence reflects the severity with which the IDF sees the offense of cruelty to animals, especially when it involves using military-issued weapons,” the IDF said in a statement, according to the Times of Israel.
The video shows the bullet hitting the camel, followed by laughter from the soldiers.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO