As a cacophony of barking dogs echoes in the background, their images line the walls of a rectangular-shaped room in a building owned by the Israel Dog Unit at the IDF’s base in Kfar Tapuach. They are the faces of men, women and children of various ages and ethnicities who are currently or once were missing.
“We deal with approximately 4,000 people reported missing each year in Israel,” Mike Ben Yaakov, who heads the Israel Dog Unit (IDU) team of volunteers, tells JNS.
With drones and dogs, the search teams mobilize, not only to find the missing, but also to help security forces locate infiltrators and sometimes weapons. About ten percent of their cases turn out to be “very serious,” Ben Yaakov says.
“There are those who were found alive, those who were found—not among the living—and there are around seven active open cases,” explains Ben Yaakov, indicating three different walls of faces. “Cases are reported to us by police and sometimes frantic relatives and it is determined whether the case is serious or not.
“A serious case could be someone who has been contemplating suicide or has tried in the past to harm himself or possibly someone with dementia who went walking on his own adjacent to open fields, wilderness, forests or near large dangerous building sites.”
Unlike police and army dog units, the IDU stays on the scene, actively searching for at least the first three or four days of a search that has been determined to be serious. It maintains continuity from the beginning to the end of the search.
“Unfortunately, the vast majority of Missing Person cases do not get a lot of attention, as Israel is focused on so many other issues. We just get the call. One or two cases manage to get wide publicity. But most fall between the chairs.”
Mike Ben Yaakov grew up with dogs. He has a master’s in law and served as chief of operations to Rabbi Meir Kahane until his assassination in 1990.
“He taught me what ahavat Yisroel means,” Ben Yaakov says of Kahane. “When I saw the need to save fellow Jews with dogs, I realized that it was a meaningful mitzvah that was falling between the cracks, so we stood up to do our share. We were very active after October 7, literally setting up camp and aiding the IDF in finding the remains of missing people.”
How a search begins
The organization maintains several “hotlines” that are deployed when a serious case is identified. Immediately they reach out to their specially trained volunteer network of hundreds to meet the challenge.
The Israel Dog Unit provides training with a series of 10 three-hour classes in which volunteers learn to design “Missing” posters, how to publish them, and how to do publicity to news outlets, on social media outlets and on WhatsApp and Telegram groups.
The volunteers are taught to operate the proprietary App designed by IDU that helps map out the last place the missing person was seen. They are also taught the basics of dog training, how to profile a missing person and interview witnesses, how to identify and check cameras near the scene of the disappearance and how to coordinate search-and-rescue teams.
When interviewing witnesses, volunteers are taught to encourage them to remember what the person was wearing and whether he or she exhibited unusual behavior.
“Continuity in the search during the key first three days is essential,” says Ben Yaakov, “so we maintain three hotline numbers and man the phones 24/7. We go to synagogue with phones, hold the phones on our Shabbat tables, and will drop everything and load up the cars as soon as a critical case comes in.”
In addition to the 400 volunteers nationwide, many of whom are also in the IDF reserves or local security squads, 10 to 15 people, including Ben Yaakov himself, live on the Tapuach base. Of these, only eight are paid staffers.
Besides offering basic accommodations for on-call human volunteers, including a synagogue for prayers, a kitchen, a cafeteria, trailers and apartments with sleeping facilities, the premises have a doggie obstacle course, a large field complete with props and obstacles to simulate various search scenarios, and separate cages for each dog. A gigantic spider-like contraption is used to contain smells that must become familiar to each dog.
Ben Yaakov has received urgent calls to search for missing people in the middle of a Seder (“fortunately, after only two of the four cups of wine,” he said) and even on High Holy Days. Since saving lives trumps all religious practices, Ben Yaakov and his team rush with drones and dogs to locations all over the country, from Kiryat Shmona to Eilat and from the Jordan Valley to the Mediterranean to hunt for the missing.
“Our drone fleet is sadly out-of-date,” Ben Yaakov laments. He says the organization is hoping to procure new state-of-the-art drones, complete with thermal sensors and better cameras to expedite rescues and detect the missing in the timeliest manner possible.
The dogs
The dogs are bred almost exclusively at the base and trained specifically for search and rescue, cadaver searches and sniffing ammunition. The bulk of the 100 dogs in the Israel Dog Unit’s fleet are Belgian Shepherds, Belgian Malinois and Dutch Shepherds that have unusually powerful sniffing abilities.
The IDU trains them from birth and houses between 25 and 30 dogs in the Tapuach base. The rest are kept with trained search volunteers at points throughout Israel.
“While these dogs are excellent at finding people and things, they do not make good house pets,” says Ben Yaakov.
Indeed, they are very active and jumpy in their cages at the base. Ben Yaakov says he gets up to 15 calls a day from people interested in giving him their excitable pup. Most of these requests are politely declined, he admits.
“I don’t care about pedigrees, I care about saving lives,” he says. “I don’t care if the dog is blind, if he is going to do the job—sniffing and has the ability to be hot on the trail and stay on the trail—stay focused for a long period of time, that’s the dog for this job. Our best litters have been mixed breeds.”
Several dogs are used for each search, sometimes with different job descriptions. A search and rescue tracking dog is usually a first responder. Most dogs will notice anything odd that doesn’t fit with the general scents of the place they are searching.
A sharp handler and a sharp dog will find these things. A cadaver dog can find a live person, but is better at identifying remains—its main skill. A search and rescue dog in a building collapse can help distinguish the living first. In very hot weather, the dogs work 20-minute shifts, and then are given a break in a cool space to “chill.”
“Israel’s weather and terrain can complicate the search process,” Ben Yaakov notes.
Aside from security work and search and rescue, the Israel Dog Unit also produces free dog shows for special needs children and adults.
Just as JNS concludes the interview with Ben Yaakov on Shushan Purim at 5 p.m., a missing person’s report comes in from Ashkelon. Ben Yaakov springs into action.
Teams in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are immediately alerted and a van with two dogs is scheduled to leave Tapuach at 6 p.m. A team of 12 is usually dispatched on an initial search and rescue.
Much of the volunteer work happens simultaneously, according to Ben Yaakov. Flyers are generated while profiles are taken, photographs collected and teams are dispatched for preliminary research, while another might operate a drone in places where missing persons were last seen.
In this case, before the two teams set out for Ashkelon, the person is found, and everyone is able to finish their Shushan Purim festivities.
“I wish they all ended that way,” Ben Yaakov concludes.