As captured First Sergeant Gilad Shalit’s 24th birthday took place yesterday, people gathered by the Shalit family tent base camp in the Rechavia neighborhood of Yerushalayim to mark his 1500th day in captivity. As family members and supporters looked on, speakers at the event called on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and the Israeli government to facilitate a prisoner trade and have Gilda Shalit freed.
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(Feivel Katz – YWN Israel)
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2 Responses
I am in Israel for a few weeks and as it happens we are renting an apartment on the block of this demonstration. The parents of Gilad are camping out in these tents. It is an utter chutzpah of these counter demonstrators, to set up directly opposite them in the faces of these parents to yell and scream at them that your “son” is not worth the sell out of the thousand terrorists.
To parents, saving a child’s life is worth anything, the trading of a million other people. For Jews, especially religious Jews, to set up in the face of grieving parents and family members, is worse than pouring salt in the wounds, it is like ripping their hearts out and stomping on them. It is fine if they have another opinion and if they wish to demonstrate it. Right down the block on the corner of King George Street, there is a triangle many use for demonstrations, literally down the block. They would have gotten the same press and the same attention, maybe even more, because there is more foot traffic and general traffic there.
IMHO, I think the Israeli government is foolish for treating the thousand terrorist prisoners any different than Gilad is being treated in the first place. But if it takes a thousand rotten souls to bring home this pure neshoma, so be it. Each IDF soldier is priceless!
There’s something we can all do and that’s continue to daven for Gilad ben Aviva.