Emory Students Rally for Gilad Shalit

Last Thursday I skipped class, something I don’t normally do. But last Thursday, I had somewhere important to be.

Last Thursday I attended the Southeast Rally for Gilad Shalit at Centennial Olympic Park, along with about 15 of my fellow Emory students. Despite the fairly large number of people in attendance, it was not a riotous or enthusiastic crowd. Unlike other rallies I have attended, this one was tinged with a certain melancholy I wasn’t expecting. The speakers shouted words of encouragement and hope, but that was the not the feeling of the rally. Instead, there was a sort of hopelessness to the rally: the cheering was muted and the smiles few. No one wanted to be here; no one wants to have to attend this type of rally. But perhaps it isn’t the amount of energy or enthusiasm we bring to the rally; perhaps the very fact that we attended was enough.

Natan Sharansky, former Soviet prisoner and now the Chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, said that when he was imprisoned by the KGB, his guards would taunt him by telling him that no one cared about his imprisonment. He never believed them. When he was finally released and heard about the letters people around the globe had sent demanding his freedom, he felt satisfaction in knowing that his guards had lied. He felt that the letters must have scared his guards in some way; he wasn’t a nameless or faceless prisoner, but a man known to and backed by the public. Sharansky told the crowd gathered in Centennial Olympic Park that Shalit, too, knows of our thoughts and prayers for him. He knows that we are behind him and fighting for him. And every letter we send to his captors, every rally we have in his honor, scares those who are holding him. It somehow, inexplicably, encourages him. He knows, as his guards know, that we are here and we are fighting for his release. Though he may feel lonely, he is not alone, but backed by an army of people willing to skip school and work to stand in the cold, all in the hopes that our presence at this rally, or others like it, will help him be released.

So maybe it doesn’t matter how enthusiastic a crowd we are, or how loudly we cheer. What matters is that we show up at all.

Last night, Emory students again showed up for Gilad. To commemorate Gilad’s 1600th day in captivity, Emory Students for Israel (ESI) organized a candle-lit vigil. ESI co-presidents Gail Axelrod (‘11B) and Sarah Green (‘11C) shared a little of Gilad’s life — his shy demeanor, his love of sports, his helping attitude, his love for his family. We said misheberach — the prayer for healing — and sang Hatikvah.