Listening for Gilad Shalit

I’m listening for two words I fail to hear: Gilad Shalit. Who? That’s my point.

My ears perk up when I hear words of particular personal interest through the din in a restaurant or other public place. “Yankees.” A certain writer’s name. “Israel.” A special song. Today’s op-ed. A name from the past. At any moment I pluck keywords out of the buzz and babel. But nowhere, at anytime, do I hear “Gilad” or “Shalit.”

Since he’s probably not part of your table talk either, permit me to tell you about Gilad Shalit. On a Sunday morning in June of 2006, Gilad, a nineteen year old corporal in the Israel Defense Forces, was abducted from an army post on the Israeli side of Gaza’s southern border by a Hamas ambush. He is thought to have suffered a broken hand and a light shoulder wound in the attack.

We’ve heard a lot about the “humanitarian” flotilla and the Gaza blockade over the past five weeks. But the real blockade is the barely-mentioned, complete sealing-off from the world of one young prisoner of war, Gilad Shalit, by Hamas.

The International Red Cross has repeatedly requested, and been denied, access to him. The Papal Nuncio to Israel was unable to secure his release through the Catholic Church's Gaza-based parish. Egyptian mediators got nowhere with Hamas.

After two-and-a-half years of Gilad's isolation in captivity, The Deputy Chief of the Hamas Political Ministry told an Arabic daily, “Shalit may have been wounded, and he may not have been. The subject no longer interests us. We are not interested in his well-being at all…”

The only contact Gilad has had with anyone outside his Hamas imprisoners is three letters (one to the Egyptian mediators), an audio tape released after one year of captivity, and—as a result of Israel’s fulfillment of its offer to release 20 female Palestinian detainees and prisoners in exchange for a video proving Shalit was still alive—a video shared with Israelis via television last October.

This blockade, longer by a year than the Gaza Strip’s, is anything but humane. Shalit has been imprisoned by Hamas more than four years.

As Israel Defense Minister Ehud Barak observed regarding the 1.5 million people in Gaza needing humanitarian aid, “Only one of them is locked in a tiny room and never sees the light of day, only one of them is not allowed visits and is in uncertain health”—the young captive Israeli soldier who isn’t getting it.

The same is true of attention, basic human, humane, humanitarian attention. Google “Gilad Shalit” or otherwise search for him on the Internet—you’ll find shockingly little, especially for a young soldier whose sole transgression, in common with soldiers of every other country in the world, was serving his country. On people’s lips? Not only is “Gilad Shalit” not on their lips, but not on their minds or even remotely in their cognizance.

Not for the first time, the Israelis are faced with a governmental “Sophie’s Choice.” The “choice” in this instance is the release of some 1,000 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel in exchange for one Israeli captive held by Hamas: Shalit. “That's the price I am willing to face to bring Shalit home,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu six days ago.

Israel sets great store in recovering every captive. Leviticus 19:16 reads, “You shall not stand idly by the blood of your brother.” In 1957, Israel returned some 5,000 POWs to Egypt for one Israeli pilot, Jonathan Etkes. In 1968, 4,338 Egyptian soldiers taken captive six months earlier by the Israel Defense Forces during the Six-Day War were exchanged for 11 Israeli soldiers captured by Egyptian forces. In 1985, Israel released 1,150 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for three Israeli soldiers abducted by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). In 2008, the Israeli government voted to exchange an untold number of living Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners for the dead bodies of two soldiers who had been kidnapped by Hezbollah militants two years earlier.

I don’t hear anything like “humanitarian aid” without also hearing “Gaza,” Palestinians,” “the flotilla.” I don’t hear “blockade” without “Israel” and “outrage.” “Gilad” would catch my attention anywhere; I might hear it across Madison Square Garden. “Shalit” would resonate. I think I’d catch it whispered at a dog’s pitch. Try me.

My gratitude to Uri Dromi for many of the details in this entry.

A Club, A Knife, A Metal Bar, And Thou...

We’re a millennium beyond the great Persian poet Omar Khayyam extolling “A Jug of wine, a loaf of bread, and thou beside me singing in the wilderness.”

The last time I sailed the Mediterranean I didn’t say to my wife at 4 a.m., “Let’s go up on deck to look at the moon, or wait for sunrise… and bring a club and a knife with you—and a metal bar, if you have one handy."

The last time I joined a protest, I was armed with a candle. That, and what feels like a millennium of separating the wheat from the chaff since then, brings me to grapple with the grand flotilla “peace” movement.

The Israelis were mugged. Their commandos may well have turned the wrong cloud at the wrong time, but as misguided, unwarranted, over-the-top or downright foolish as their method may have been, they dropped into a trap. The do-gooders were lying-in-wait for them with open armament. As a shipboard bard might have versified wistfully after the drubbing and retaliatory fire, “A club, a knife, a metal bar, and thou beside me swinging in the wilderness.”

Let’s deal with this summarily. The Israelis blundered, hugely. But the flotilla of 546 “peaceful” activists knew what they were sailing into and what they were inviting by doing so. There’s history!—a three-year blockade; accordance with maritime law; previous flotillas intercepted; and Egypt’s co-existing blockade and independent use of force, lethal and conveniently overlooked.

Anyone desiring to stage a world-wide attention-getting event couldn’t do better. And that’s what the “humanitarians” of the six-ship flotilla wanted. According to a prior statement from their Gaza Freedom March, “A violent response from Israel will breathe new life into the Palestine solidarity movement….”

So, let’s think about this. Why does Israel have to justify inspecting the goods of six ships, or even one, from a foreign country entering its waters and bound for its shores? What country does less? What country today doesn’t have customs officers or the equivalent? What country allows anyone entry without a valid passport? What country in this day and age doesn’t have a responsibility to its citizens to protect them from harm, external or internal? The United States has a Coast Guard. And a Border Patrol. China built a Great Wall to thwart intruders from the north. Imperial Russia chose a wider gauge for its railroad tracks to prevent invasion via rail from Europe.

In 2008, a United Nations provision called for ships belonging to Iran’s state–owned Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines, known as Irisl, "to be boarded and inspected at sea or in port if," according to this morning’s New York Times, “there are ‘reasonable grounds to believe’ they are carrying contraband forbidden by Security Council resolutions on Iran.” The Times’ report continues, “In three boardings, two by the United States Navy and one by Israeli commandos, authorities said they had discovered a virtual arms bazaar, including thousands of Katyusha rockets, grenades and mortar shells, believed to be intended for Hezbollah.” A virtual arms bazaar! How much evidence do Israelis, or their even-handed critics, need?

In New York City, a new Jewish Community Center deems it necessary to block its entrance with concrete posts to protect the lives and limbs of all those on its premises. I’ve yet to see a Manhattan church or mosque that has had to resort to such measures—upright reminders, sadly in particular to children attending to learn “Thou shalt love…” by Commandment and social ethics, that they are hated and randomly in danger for being what they are. Try to tell me Jews have no right to protect themselves and their children—and then, that the Israelis have no right to intercept a flotilla that may carry ill to them or to blockade an area that dispatches, by air and land, missiles, mines or suicide bombs of death, disfigurement, dismemberment and destruction.