I took a few pictures and spoke with Noam Shalit, Gilad's father, about what he is doing and what Israel Muse is doing to support the protest of releasing Gilad Shalit...
He is a soft spoken man with a broken heart but full of inspiration and energy to protest his son's release day in and day out. I cannot imagine the amount of energy it would take to both yearn for your child as well as protest for years on end and give up your life to sit in a tent all day and night, this is something truly powerful and heart-breaking at the same time...
While the protest tent may seem almost empty on an average day, it does draw large crowds of locals and foreigners on Friday nights for Shabbat with the family as well as on Jewish holidays... Most weekends a lot more people show their support by signing petitions and volunteering to help the family out in any way they can...
A volunteer I spoke with mentioned that the table which they use to get people to sign the petition was the original table that was first used 2 years ago when this protest began in Jerusalem... She mentioned that at first they put the table there and waited for people to sign the petition but thought that not many people would show enough interest in this, how wrong they were... After some time, many people started to approach the table to sign the petition and became aware of this campaign which started to spread like wildfire across Israel... It is one thing knowing about a campaign and another thing actually doing something about it to help... The people who have played their role in this have made the campaign what it is today and it will hopefully push the government to speed up the process of having Gilad released...
The recent 12-day Shalit "Freedom March" from the Shalit families home, Mitzpe Hila, in northern Israel to Jerusalem in the south managed to gather a total of over 200 000 people, this is a long way from a simple table with a few people...
Here are some pictures I took of the protest tent.
Click an image to view a larger version of it or use this link to view the entire album.
