One Father and Four Mothers

Noam Shalit, the father of Gilad Shalit, died at age 68 from leukemia. In 2006, Hamas’s terrorists emerged from a terror tunnel they dug to kidnap Gilad who was on an IDF patrol near Gaza. Hamas kept him captive for more than five years before releasing him in a swap for 1,027 security prisoners held by Israel.

That swap remains controversial to this day.

Noam Shalit tirelessly recruited Israeli society to his cause, crafting a public relations campaign depicting Gilad as “everyone’s son,” tapping into the visceral fear that anyone’s child could one day disappear. Noam’s movement resembled the 1990s “Four Mothers” campaign, a textbook case of a grassroots movement that pressured Israeli policymakers to withdraw IDF forces from Lebanon, which created the vacuum allowing Hezbollah to take power.

There is no faulting Noam Shalit, who acted out of love for his son. The case gripped Israelis, both secular and religious. Many religious women lit an extra Shabbos candle for Gilad for years. The day father and son were reunited and hugged each other on camera, there wasn’t a father in Israel who didn’t want to hug his son at that moment.

Every Jewish life is a world unto itself, but Israel paid a high price for the release of Gilad, who became a sportswriter and got married ten months ago.