Students reach out to Shalit
MOST 16-year-olds are too busy playing video games or chatting on Facebook to care about the plight of someone half-a-world away.
MOST 16-year-olds are too busy playing video games or chatting on Facebook to care about the plight of someone half-a-world away.
Not Jake Searle, who helped organise a rally in Melbourne’s CBD on Monday, to reflect on captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit’s 24th birthday.
Dozens of protesters carried placards and sang popular Israeli tunes, as Jake asked them to remember: “What did you do on your birthday? What did you wish for?”
Jake, a year 11 student at Leibler Yavneh College, and his fellow demonstrators, handed out postcards detailing Shalit’s plight to Burke Street lunchers.
“We had some interesting reactions,” he said. “Many didn’t know about Gilad and seemed genuinely interested and asked how they could help.
StandWithUs advocate Michelle Rojas-Tal — visiting Australia in the past month — presented photos of the Melbourne rally to Shalit’s mother Aviva upon her return to Israel on Tuesday.
“She was very grateful for what you guys had done,” Rojas-Tal told Jake.
Shalit’s family marked his 24th birthday in a protest tent set up in Jerusalem.
“Again this year I did not buy a present, I did not bake a cake, and you will not blow out your candles,” Aviva told thousands of protesters.
Shalit’s birthday was the 1525th day the IDF soldier had been held in captivity by Hamas.
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