Israel Matzav

Shalit family setting up protest tent outside Prime Minister's residence

The Shalit family is setting up a protest tent outside the Prime Minister's residence in a bid to get Prime Minister Ehud K. Olmert to agree to Hamas' price for releasing the kidnapped IDF corporal. That price is said to be somewhere around 1,000 - 1,400 'Palestinian' terrorists, some 450 of whom have 'blood on their hands.' According to media reports here in Israel, Olmert has agreed to release all but 6-10 of the terrorists. The campaign to release Shalit is going commercial.

On Thursday, Eran Gefan, who directs the advertising firm Interactive, unveiled what in Hebrew is a one word campaign - "Hatzilu!"

Gefan said that his firm created a computer font based on Schalit's handwriting so that it could send handwritten notes to decision makers, as well as place the word in Schalit's handwriting on billboards and buses. It will send SMS messages with this word to politicians.

In addition, he said, using a computer simulation, the company has created a brief radio advertisement making use of his voice as it is heard in the cassette which he sent his family one year after his kidnapping.

"We built the cry of Gilad, what we thought he would say to us if he could," Gefan told reporters at a press conference in Tel Aviv. "We are bringing the voice of Gilad and his plea to the public," said Gefan. "Families in Israel will get a letter that he has written and hear his cry."

"It is the minimum that he could ask," said Hezi Mashita, who heads the campaign.

On Sunday morning, Israel Radio interviewed Shalit's grandfather Zvi Shalit, who was on his way to Jerusalem. Shalit said that Israel should pay 'any price,' and that no one else has any right to open their mouths because they don't understand what the family is going through. Shalit was asked about another group that is setting up a protest tent opposite the Shalit family tent - a group of terror victims (who have received far less publicity than the Shalit family has received). He mentioned non-IDF soldiers for whom Israel has released terrorists in the past, even though they got themselves kidnapped (he 'wouldn't mention any names' but anyone who hasn't lived in a cave for the last five years knew what he was talking about), and wondered why there was no protest then.

The reasons why there was no protest then are obvious:

1. The government at least went through the charade of saying that none of the terrorists being released had blood on their hands. This time we are going to have it rubbed into our faces that the government is releasing mass murderers.

2. No one was running a public campaign to release that prisoner. He was the figleaf for allowing the government to trade live prisoners for bodies, which was the main part of the deal.

3. After that release there was still some sense that there were limits to how far the government would go to release prisoners. The proposed deal for Shalit would remove any limits. We would all become potential kidnap victims because the terrorists will know that the government will stop at nothing to cut a deal.

Here's hoping that Olmert - the most disgraced Prime Minister in Israel's sordid history of corrupt politicians - will go quietly into the night without endangering any more lives.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:41 AM