Gilad Schalit has spent more than 1,000 days as a captive of Hamas. Kidnapped 1,054 days ago, he remains the ill-treated, abused, tormented human pawn of an inhuman, cynical regime of genocidal terrorists and haters of Jews.
“The kidnapping of Israeli soldiers has become a strategic vision for Hamas,” said Abdel Latif Qanou, a Hamas spokesperson in northern Gaza last month. Without the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails, Qanou said, “Schalit would never see daylight.”
And thus, in the succinct prose of the devil’s advocate, Qanou explained both the means and the ends of the “democratically elected” leaders of the people of Gaza whose public policy, we are sad to note, evokes no opprobrium from those who so vocally, indignantly and some so self-righteously feel the pain of the world’s oppressed.
It is difficult to understand how and why individuals who are moved by the plight of the people of Gaza, for example, are so little-moved by the plight of young Gilad Schalit. It is also difficult to understand how and why those same individuals who inveigh in the highest pitch of vehemence and umbrage against the Jewish state will not find a single word of criticism for the Hamas rulers who have kept Schalit beyond the reach even of the Red Cross.
Unfortunately, the efforts of the Israeli government to date have not succeeded in securing Schalit’s release, nor has Israel been alone in trying to win their soldier’s freedom. Canadian Jewish communities – an indeed communities throughout the Diaspora – have rallied and continue to rally for the young man’s freedom. The European Union, most notably France, has spoken out on behalf of Schalit. Last October, Ingrid Betancourt, a former Colombian presidential candidate who had been held captive by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia for six years, urged the European Parliament to work for Schalit’s release.
Some members of the U.S. Congress have recently launched an initiative that would tie the $900-million Gaza reconstruction aid, promised earlier in the year by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to Schalit’s release. It is now hoped that Pope Benedict XVI will also join in the cause. At the invitation of Israeli President Shimon Peres, Gilad’s father, Noam, met with the spiritual leader of the Catholic church on Monday. The Pope agreed to meet with Schalit’s father. The press also reported that the pontiff promised to take part in the effort to bring Gilad home.
Not surprisingly, as Gilad’s father told The CJN last week, the uncertainty regarding his son’s condition is a hard burden of trauma and anguish.
Gaza is a place of darkness. Ordinary Gazans are exploited even as their pressing needs are neglected by their rulers, who, in the words of the writer Joseph Conrad, are the heart of that darkness. Only a concerted effort by fair-minded people, governments and NGOs can penetrate that darkness and bring Gilad Schalit home to his family.
