Israeli soldier marks 5th year in captivity

JERUSALEM — Gaza Strip militants vowed Saturday that an Israeli soldier captured five years ago would not "see the light" until Palestinian prisoners held by Israel were released.

In Israel, some 400 supporters of Sgt. Gilad Schalit gathered at the border crossing where he was seized by gunmen linked to Gaza's ruling Hamas movement on June 25, 2006.

They waved Israeli flags emblazoned with his likeness and demanded the government do more to secure his release. A relative read a letter from Schalit's grandfather faulting the state for failing to bring the 24-year-old home.

"The people involved talk to us from time to time, stroke our heads, but my beloved grandchild Gilad, through no fault of his own, is still rotting away in a Hamas dungeon like a common criminal," Zvi Schalit wrote.

In Jerusalem, Schalit's parents, his brother and his brother's girlfriend chained themselves to one another and to a railing on the side of a small road leading to the prime minister's residence.

"Our family has been held captive for five years now, we'll stay here as long as we have to," the Ynet news website quoted Schalit's father, Noam Schalit, as saying.

Schalit, a tank crewman, was taken captive after militants tunneled under the Israeli border, killed two soldiers at a border post and dragged him bleeding into Gaza. Hamas has allowed no one to visit him and last offered a sign of life in October 2009.

Hamas' threat to continue holding him until its demands are met was delivered in a 39-second video posted Saturday on the group's website.

Hamas wants Israel to release hundreds of Palestinian militants, including the masterminds of attacks that killed dozens of Israelis. Israeli officials have balked, arguing that releasing the men would put more Israelis in danger.

In the northern Gaza town of Jabaliya, families of some of the estimated 7,500 Palestinian prisoners incarcerated in Israeli jails sat with pictures of their imprisoned sons emblazoned on birthday cakes. Number candles were planted on the cakes, signifying the 12 to 22 years the men had spent in Israeli prisons.

The White House and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued statements calling for Schalit's immediate release.

Schalit holds dual French-Israeli citizenship, and Israeli media reported that the French ambassador to Israel brought Schalit's parents a letter from French President Nicolas Sarkozy assuring Schalit that "France will not abandon you."

Earlier this week, Hamas rebuffed an appeal from the International Committee of the Red Cross to prove Schalit was still alive. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu retaliated by saying Palestinian prisoners would be stripped of access to higher education and other unspecified privileges.

Palestinian prisoners have reported that Israeli corrections officials have been confiscating cell phones that had been smuggled to them, and that leading Hamas prisoners have been transferred to solitary confinement.

Kadoura Fares, head of the Palestinian prisoners association, said Israel had already severely limited prisoners' visitation rights.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri called the new measures announced by the prime minister "a violation of international law and international humanitarian law" and urged international intervention to block them.

[Bulls42]

All who oppose the Zionist regime please STOP calling it "Israel" Every time you do it you reward the occupation of Palestine. Name "Israel" implies a state on the occupied territory. Call the occupiers what they really are: the Zionist regime. This way, every time you refer to it, you will imply its temporary nature (the nature of all occupying regimes). Encourage your fellow comment posters to use the name Zionist regime as well. We must also be categorically against generalizing, and recognize that many Jews are against the crimes the Zionist regime is committing in their names, and that many Jews are leading the global resistance to it. They should be proud. I wish that they finally find piece wherever they choose to live (including Palestine) through a peaceful democratic process as opposed to the Nazi-style occupation the current Zionist regime is using.

The only way to oppose the Zionist controlled media and to take each other's comments and copy, repost, email, and otherwise distribute them to other blogs, newspaper websites, Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking websites. Please do so with this comment for justice to prevail

[BorderOne]

I support for freedom and peace in mideast, especially in Palestine.
We Americans speak of freedoms, tolerance, and diversity, yet our government makes the Zionist occupation possible against our will, with our tax money, and making us accomplices in constant murders that the Zionist regime is committing including murders of our own American citizens (search on youtube for "Rachel Corrie" video of Zionist bulldozer crushing her to death). I am ashamed as an American that our politicians are controlled by the Zionist regime to such a terrifying extent. Tens of senators, state representatives, and ambassadors to foreign countries are Jewish. While I recognize that many are honest and against the Zionist regime, I am concerned about the fair representation of our will at the highest levels of our government. Just look on Wikipedia for "List of Jewish American politicians," and visit prince.org/msg/105/271100 to discover that all five Federal Reserve chairmen/chairwomen are Jewish, and almost all (9 out of 12) regional Fed chairmen/chairwomen are also Jewish. I never like to generalize, but Jews comprise only 2% of our population and they have so much power in the government and almost absolute power over our money supply and economic polices. I am just not comfortable that all Americans are being represented properly especially not on the Palestine occupation issue that I know most people do not support judging by the comments against the Zionist regime I hear everywhere. Urge your state representatives and senators to immediately stop any remaining support for the Zionist regime. Much of the support already stopped because of the increasing pressure on this issue, but we Americans need to completely distance ourselves from this oppressive regime and stop being accomplices in its murders! The world is also reacting. Who would want to be remembered in history as an accomplice to ruthless occupation? Many countries, companies, and countless moral individuals have already successfully implemented no relations with the Zionist government and others are implementing the same policy as we speak. Not travel there, not buy anything from it, not trade with it, not communicate with it, etc. Also do the same with any country that supports it because the Zionist government only survives because of its external supporters

[md2205]

People should call the White House and demand that Obama not allow negotiations until Hamas delivers Gilad alive to his family without trying to get thousands of Palestinian murderers out of Israeli jails as part of a deal to release him. Why must Israel always make the concessions? They won the Six Day War, which the Arabs started, by the way, and no one seems to remember that. They stated that they wanted to drive all the Jews into the sea. They didn't succeed because G-d supports the Jews and won't let that happen. The land Israel won from that war is land given to the Jews by G-d thousands of years ago, and if the Arabs hadn't started that war, maybe they would still have that land. Since when do the victors of a war they didn't start have to concede to the losers?

[md2205]

Human rights groups do not make demands of Hamas and the Arabs to let Gilad Shalit go. They only want to pressure Israel to give in to their demands again. It is Hamas that is evil and should be protested against politically, not Israel. Why doesn't the world look at the doings of Hamas and see them for what they are? Because they only want to express their antisemitism against Israel, hiding it as anti-Zionism and other such euphemisms, pinning it on any fault they can conjure up against Israel. The Arabs also treat their women terribly but I don't see the world getting all worked up about that.

[myth1958]

From across the pond it sounds like both sides have taken excesses in a war without end. Israel, backed into a corner of their own making, has used ruthlessly efficient tactics on Palestinians for decades. The Palestinians - desperate to shake the power structure and backed into a corner of their own making, too, resort to cowardly attacks upon civilians via rocket attacks, bombs and any means they can grasp. Neither side will force the other to capitulate, inching the stalemate back and forth by millimeters. Will the state of Israel ever see peace? Unlikely until concessions on land are made. Will Palestinians ever enjoy peace or any measure of prosperity? Not until they concede Israel has an equal right to exist and take responsibility for the numerous cowardly attacks, wars and atrocities they (or their proxies in Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran and elsewhere) have perpetrated since the founding of the Jewish state. They both must like pain: they live within it daily, draping righteousness over their shoulders as if they were blameless in all things. Unfortunately, civilians and military personnel on both sides will keep bearing the burden of fanatical leadership through yet another lifetime in Hell.

[askagain]

How much more land does Israel have to concede? Israel has already returned land yet peace did not follow. Retuning land for peace is a flawed policy and will not work.

[myth1958]

askagain: How many more Gilad Schalits does it take? How many more rocket attacks? An endless number, because neither side will budge from positions hardened by wars upon wars. This cycle has already lasted several generations and I predict it will last indefinitely into the future because both groups have hardened their positions to the extent that more war is inevitable. I don't expect Israel to roll over and give in, nor will the Palestinians. So prospects for peace are no better than they ever were. As long as outside agitators (hostile Arab governments) keep supplying money and arms, the terrorism business will continue to flourish. Can even the best military stop guerilla attacks? Ask the Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Israelis up and down the so-called 'Holy' land. Never. Land for peace may not be practical, or feasible, or even reasonable. But neither is unremitting conflict decade after decade, with the babies of today doomed to become the soldiers and terrorists of tomorrow. Perhaps only the appearance of someone unpredictable - a figure of the stature of a Gandhi, a Jesus, a Mohammed - perhaps only such a person would have the wisdom and the stature to end this shameful murder flowing both ways. Perhaps not.

[WeHappyFew]

G*d I can't believe that's five years already, poor bastard.