THREE SOLDIERS

Wednesday, October 30th. 2007
[Posted at 8:05, at the moment of a rather disturbing earthquake. Over a dozen floors up. Oy.]


Rabbosai, please expand the definition of 'Prisoner of Zion' (Asserei Tzion).
In the past, the term was specifically applied to people who were imprisoned or exiled because of Zionist activity, such being illegal in the country where they were imprisoned or exiled.

A Jewish soldier, in the hands of Hamas or Hezbollah, should surely qualify also.


GILAD SHALIT, ELDAD REGEV, EHUD GOLDWASSER.


Being a Jew and a soldier of the IDF stamps them as Zionists, especially in the eyes of Hamas and Hezbollah - and the eyes of Saudi Arabia and Iran, those being the paymasters of those two terrorist entities respectively.

They are not prisoners of war - they were not captured but kidnapped, and not by a military or a foreign power, but by gangsters claiming a political cause. They are not treated as prisoners of war, but held in secret locations, denied visits by the red-cross, and denied access to religious support.


GILAD SHALIT, ELDAD REGEV, EHUD GOLDWASSER.


At five thirty this afternoon, at Montgomery and Market Streets in downtown San Francisco, while the commuters streamed past on their way home, we gathered to keep alive the memories of these men, as indeed we hope that they are still alive. We held up posters of their faces and signs with their names, we held flags and handed out literature. We spoke about them, and read aloud from material describing what they were like, and how their families and friends related to them, in order that they cease being just names, but become people to those willing to listen - so that the listeners could think of them as people, as individuals, as members of families, with friends who cared about them, classmates and companions who knew them, parents and siblings who loved them.

People. Not just names. Not just dry data in an ongoing polemic.


GILAD SHALIT, ELDAD REGEV, EHUD GOLDWASSER.


There were thirty of us. After speaking of Gilad Shalit, Eldad Regev, and Ehud Goldwasser, we recited Psalm 70 in Hebrew and English. We held candles, and in the darkening street we spoke with each other. Some of us come to nearly every event, others are limited by their location and can only attend actions in San Francisco or the East Bay. Some do not come on Shabbes, others believe that attending a pro-Israel protest on Shabbes is doing the Lord's work - a milchemes mitzvah. Most of us know each other. We reconnected, exchanged news about those who could not come, mentioned people we knew, events we had been to. We interacted like normal people who get along with each other, and share in each others' lives.

Precisely like Gilad Shalit, Eldad Regev, and Ehud Goldwasser should likewise be able to do.


"...Let them be ashamed and confounded, that seek after my soul;
Let them be turned backward and put to confusion, that desire my hurt...."


This year we gathered so that these three men are not forgotten.
May we gather next year to rejoice in their home-coming.