NC man helps rescue 70 dogs near Gaza, relocate them to US

Dozens of dogs are looking for new homes in the United States after being evacuated from the West Bank earlier this month.

Maad Abu-Ghazalah, who now lives in Wilmington, spent most of his adult life in the San Francisco area, but he’s originally from Nablus, Palestine.

He created Daily Hugz animal sanctuary in 2014 and has spent the last 10 years getting dogs off the streets of Gaza.

“I rescued as many animals as I could and I started bringing in kids,” Abu-Ghazalah said. “I showed them how to love these animals because they’ve never been in that situation. They never thought of a dog in that light. They only thought of them as dirty or vicious or violent, so I wanted to show them that these animals are very loving.”

Over the years, he felt it made a difference for the animals and the community.

Then, war broke out in Gaza, making it difficult to care for and protect the dogs.

“I just remember sitting there thinking, I’ve got to put my own ego and vision of what I wanted aside and take account of reality,” Abu-Ghazalah said. “The animals would be better off somewhere else. “

Abu-Ghazalah's first step was to call SPCA International. He said they were eager to help evacuate the dogs.

It took four months of planning to fly the dogs out. Sixty dogs were rescued from Daily Hugz, and another 10 would leave from the Bethlehem Animal Shelter.

Abu-Ghazalah flew to the West Bank to help round up the dogs at Daily Hugz. Most of them had never been in a kennel. Trucks came to pick the dogs up before sunrise, beginning the toughest leg of their journey.

Israeli military enforced tough restrictions on the rescuers as they headed to Tel Aviv Airport. At a border checkpoint between the West Bank and Israel, each crate was taken off the trucks and put onto new trucks. At the airport, each dog was taken out of its crate and put into new crates before boarding a cargo airplane.

“Imagine how hairy this is. These are all feral dogs,” Abu-Ghazalah said. “We somehow managed through it. We got the dogs on the plane and everybody was nervous the whole way.”

A veterinarian was the only person permitted to fly with the dogs. The flight had a layover in Belgium before landing at JFK International Airport in New York.

There was only one hiccup during all those hours in the air -- a handful of dogs chewed their way out of their crates.

Airport workers told Abu-Ghazalah they’d never seen anything like it.

“One of them just ate a hole for his head to come out. From a Palestinian perspective, this is political to me. Everyone is so afraid of the Palestinians and [think] they’re so violent and they keep saying they just want to be free. If you want to politicize it, that’s what I saw [with the dogs]," Abu-Ghazalah said. "I saw that they just want to breathe like everybody else."

Once off the plane, the dogs were checked and given time to rest at the airport’s animal reception center. Then, they went their separate ways to foster homes across the country.

Local rescue groups in states like Illinois, California, Ohio, Michigan, Washington and Wyoming will work to place them with permanent owners.

Abu-Ghazalah drove a van full of dogs to one rescue in Alabama. He returned home to Wilmington with four of them.

Daily Hugz and Abu-Ghazalah's efforts to help animals in Palestine are on hold for now.

“I saw a different part of humanity, which may be the minority, but it's more powerful than I could have anticipated,” Abu-Ghazalah said. “Because of what’s happening in Gaza, I have a really negative view of what people can do to each other. And that’s true, but on the other end, they can be just as powerful doing good things.”

Abu-Ghazalah hopes to continue to partner with SPCA International in the future. He’s also planning a cross-country road trip to visit all the dogs once they find their forever homes.