Since October 7, Ben Ozeri has dedicated himself to rescuing pets abandoned in Gaza border communities, striving to reunite them with their owners. His efforts have saved numerous dogs, cats and rabbits belonging to families forced to flee the horrors of the Hamas attacks or those who tragically lost their lives to the violence.
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"I arrived here a couple of days after the Hamas attack," Ozeri told Ynet in an interview. "At first, I came there as a volunteer with the police but when I realized the state of the animals there, I began helping. We rescued about 30 of them. Eden Barzilai who volunteered to work with me, contacted the families who had evacuated from the border communities and coordinated with them."
Ozeri did not stop at the border and had been in Gaza twice already to care for the animals there, providing them with food and water and rescuing injured pets in need of medical attention.
"The animals are traumatized," he said. "Dogs and cats were in terrible condition because the terrorists tried to kill them as well and succeeded with some. They were terrified. It was very difficult. They were covered in soot and some were injured."
He said families were trying to locate their pets and volunteer groups opened dedicated Facebook pages to find border residents who lost their four-legged companions and offer them help. "Families also reached out to me directly and we managed to reunite them with their pets," Ozeri said.
He posted on his Instagram that soldiers deployed to the border area were helping dogs and cats there. "The soldiers are sharing their food with the pets there and in some communities, people were still around to care for the animals because we cannot find foster homes for all of them," he wrote.
"Some pets will be able to recover from their trauma but others won't," Ozeri said. "They saw things that will stick with them their entire lives. All the noise from the explosions, all the dead people, some of whose owners were murdered remained by their bodies. They are suffering serious trauma," he said.
Ozeri's primarily focuses on reuniting families with their pets. "If their owners are no longer alive, then the extended family may be able to take them in." He also reached out to NGOs working in the area and has found homes through them for 15 cats who were saved from a wooded area that had been under fire. Some of them were wounded by mortar fire.