There has been a petition (click here to see and/or sign it) circulating on the Web asking Tony Blair, UK representative of the Quartet, to apply as much pressure as he can muster to allow Magen David Adom (the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross) to visit Gilad Shalit, who has been held by Hamas in captivity for over four years with no contact with the outside world.
I don’t really believe Internet petitions carry much weight. I don’t think the Taliban was much affected by one circulating a decade or so ago asking it to grant women basic human rights. And I don’t imagine Hamas (first-cousin to the Taliban) will be moved to clemency by the moral outrage of a few thousand infidels. I thought about not signing it myself, despite having read about it on a blog and receiving a direct appeal via email.
And then I thought again.
Perhaps this petition will remind the Quartet that Gilad Shalit is still in people’s minds. Perhaps it will remind the international community that for all the flak Israel gets about being inhumane and violating people’s rights, there is actually an Israeli who was seized in a cross-border raid (international law, anyone?) who has been held captive by those poor helpless souls in Gaza, and has been denied contact with his family or with MDA (also in violation of international law). Perhaps it will rattle the consciences of those who purport to be stalwart champions of human rights, reminding them that there is one prisoner whose rights have been violated, whom they have willfully ignored for four long years. Perhaps it will remind the world that his captors are terrorists who live outside international and every other kind of law, and that perhaps it is a mistake to treat them as though they are normalized national leaders and rational actors on the world stage.
Hamas has successfully kept Shalit’s location a secret. For a time, there were rumors he had been spirited to Egypt, though now it is believed that he is somewhere in the Gaza Strip. It was hoped that Operation Cast Lead would turn him up, or that a cease-fire would include provisions for his return. The demands for the release of thousands of Arab prisoners from Israeli prisons, including those responsible for masterminding or carrying out terror attacks that murdered Israeli citizens, is a travesty. Not only do such demands (or the satisfaction of them) make a mockery of the rule of law in Israel; they ensure that such criminals and terrorists will be back to work Sunday morning at 9:00 AM to do what they do best: kill innocent people.
While most people in Israel don’t necessarily agree that Shalit should be freed at any cost, no one can deny the agony Shalit’s family have lived in for the past four years, wondering where their son is, if he is whole, or even alive. Their public presence and pleas to any and every world leader, dignitary, or person likely to have contact with Hamas add to the nation’s pain. Several of Israel’s soldiers have disappeared without a trace and have been missing for decades: Zecharya Baumel, Tzvi Feldman, and Yehuda Katz have been missing since the Battle of Sultan Yakoub in Lebanon in 1982; Ron Arad was captured after his plane was shot down in Lebanon in 1986; Guy Hever was last seen at his army base in the Golan Heights in 1997; Majdy Halabi was last seen at a hitchhiking stop in Daryat El Karmel in 2005; and Gilad Shalit was abducted in the area of Kibbutz Kerem Shalom in 2006.
Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu must weigh the various factors of military morale, the government’s duty to redeem its soldiers, the understandable anguish of the boy’s parents, the current, (at best) shaky peace prospects, the safety of the Israeli populace, and his reelection prospects. Tony Blair has none of these concerns. Perhaps this may increase the likelihood of the petition’s success, at least in encouraging him to apply pressure. Whether that pressure would ever result in any positive results is considerably less likely. (Blair is, after all, a soft Western infidel.)
When I pray, I don’t necessarily expect an answer. I pray to articulate and make my thoughts and wishes known. What the Hearer does with that is up to Him.
In that same spirit, perhaps keying one’s name to this petition does not so much ensure results as make our wishes known. Since all else that has been tried (short of handing explosive belts to Arab terrorists as they file out of prison) has failed, who knows? Perhaps it may, down the road, as part of some mysterious sequence of events, do some good.
It can’t hurt.
Shimshonit 
I’ll go and sign it right away!