Rishon LeZion, Israel (special) -- Dr. Yoni Peres, director of the teaching hospital at Hebrew University’s School of Veterinary Medicine, was shmoozing recently with Dr. Stanley Newman, a retired veterinarian from Springfield, N.J., about how rabies affect American and Israeli cats and dogs. 

“In the States,” said Peres, “the reservoir for rabies is the raccoon. Because people keep their dogs at home, they don’t get mixed up with raccoons.  But cats sometimes go outside and have contact with raccoons, and that is how they get the rabies. In America, cats are more high risk than dogs for rabies.  “Here,” the Israeli veterinarian added, “the situation is the opposite, because the reservoirs for rabbis are the wolves, jackals and hyenas. Those animals live around towns and cities. When they get rabid, they lose their fear of man.  They come in and attack anything. If they encounter a cat, the cat is fast enough to run away but dogs are more clumsy and are more curious, so they get in contact with these animals. So the dog is the number one rabid animal in Israel rather than the cat.” Newman, a past president of the American Veterinarians for Israel, noted during

Dr. Yoni Peres

a tour led by Peres of the Israeli veterinary school that in Israel many cats seem to wander wild on city streets--seemingly far more than in the United States.Peres, son of former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, estimated that hundreds of thousands -- if not a million -- feral cats create a problem in Israel and added that “there is a big controversy what to do with them.” 

The cats, like squirrels in the United States, “live on the streets; they live on the garbage,” 
Peres said. “If you decided to have a program where you secured and closed all the 
garbage cans, and the garbage rooms, then they will starve and they will become sicker and 
sicker and there will be more diseases. Their immune systems will weaken and you will 
have small sick cats on the streets. 

“The other problem is that if you decrease the cat population, you might increase, or 
interfere with the balance, of mice and rats. Which is worse, I don’t know -- cats or rats? 
“Also some people feed the cats. You can see people going down from their buildings with 
their leftovers and a group of 20-30 cats will come to be fed.” 

Peres said the municipality of Tel Aviv is catching the cats, neutering them, and then 
putting them back on the street, in the hope of controlling the population. “But some 
biologists say this won’t do the job,” Peres added. “This is a big controversy.” Thus far, Peres said, cats have caused no real problem for the human population.  “But imagine what would happen if they should all get rabies.” 

Private veterinarians in Israel sometimes refer difficult cases to the Veterinary Hospital “if 
they don’t have the facilities or the knowledge,” and other pets are brought in by owners who 
are seeking a “second opinion” on their treatment.  Still others are brought to the hospital at 
hours when regular veterinarians are not available. 

Creation of the veterinary school in 1985 occasioned some controversy among already 
established veterinarians in Israel, who felt the market was saturated and did not welcome 
even more competition. Peres said the criticism has become less intense in more recent years.  Before the school’s creation, he said, about 100 Israelis a year became veterinarians by graduating from foreign schools, particularly in Italy.  Now, the annual crop of veterinarians still is about 100, but 40 of them are graduated from the Hebrew University. 

Newman’s veterinarian group once had backed their Israeli colleagues’ opposition to the 
school, but eventually switched its position and became a supporter. With about 500 
members throughout the United States--most of them Jewish--the American Veterinarians 
for Israel periodically contribute equipment for the teaching hospital. 

Peres said graduating new veterinarians is but one aspect of the school.  “A veterinary 
school is a center for excellence, for continuing education, for contacts with the Middle East 
and the rest of the world, and for increasing the level of veterinary medicine in the country,” 
he said. 

Veterinarians from Egypt and from the Palestinian Authority come to the school for several 
months of intensive courses, as do veterinarians who have immigrated to Israel from the 
former Soviet Union.  “We also wanted to have contracts with the Jordanians, but there 
were political problems,” Peres said. 

The E-shaped school building is beginning to bulge at the seams as a result of the varied 
activities that occur there. One class has to be taught in the bomb shelter because of a 
lack of classroom space. There also is a need for more research space and equipment, 
according to Peres, who does quite a bit of fundraising for the school. 

Although the school’s focus is mainly clinical, Peres said, “I would say that we have some 
nice achievements in research, especially in the field of small animal and canine infectious 
diseases. As for large animals, we have conducted some research on bovine lameness. 
And we have been working in the field of wildlife diseases.” 

Following in his father’s footsteps, Peres hopes to create partnerships between the 
veterinary school and similar institutions throughout the Middle East to conduct joint 
research, particularly on how to curb animal diseases that can spread to humans.