A week-long vigil for Gilad Shalit began outside Downing Street today. It has been arranged by the FZY, who deserve a massive round of applause for this and other initiatives for Gilad. It was great to be there today, and to see so many positive reactions from passers-by. People stopped to take a leaflet, to sign the petition and to express their support for Gilad. I spotted Nick Clegg pacing down the road and I managed to pass a leaflet through his throng of advisers and into his hands.
Here is a photograph of us demonstrating for Gilad today.
Nice one
Chas, you are brilliant to get through to Clegg at all. Should we now all write and ask him what he thought of the leaflet?
I just wanted to say hi and great job! You are in the trenches and fighting the good fight!! Bless you.
Well done to FZY for organising this and to all those taking part; you’re all stars in my book.
fantastic everyone. hope to get there. well done FZY for this initiative.
Hang on a minute – are you sure that photo was taken in London? T-shirts, sunshine……whatever next?!
Great stuff. I went to a concert for gilad yesterday here in Israel near the Gaza border. It was very moving indeed. It’s so important we keep doing all these things to keep Gilad on the minds of our leaders.
Well done on Clegg.
As an Israeli kol Hakavod FZY and well done for demonstrating outside Downing Street. Not to much to hope that a similar demonstration could be organised opposite the EU Offices in London and the offices of the IRC in order to embarrass them to actually do something rather than mouth useless platitudes.
I’ll be back there today for a while.
This post has been crossposted at CiFWatch http://cifwatch.com/2010/07/05/vigil-for-gilad-shalit-in-london/
Chas, thank you for your intelligent posts and for your support regarding Gilad’s issue. Peace from Israel!
It’s my pleasure Anna. Thanks for reading!
I was back at the vigil again today and had a lovely chat with a couple of people who read this blog. It was lovely. Here’s a photograph of me avec my newly adopted sister, Sharna.
I hope to be back at the vigil again between now and the end of the week. Hope to see you there.
Chas, A very big thank you for all your support for Gilad Shalit and of Israel. I read your blog every day.
Is there a petition on the go anywhere?
Sorry – that should read ‘online petition’.
Cheers!
I will check and get back to you!
There is a proposal to ‘twin’ Dublin and Gaza.
Note that Lord Mayor Gerry Breen, the guy proposing this, says: “Gaza doesn’t necessarily need to benefit from it…”
What a self-indulgent muppet.
http://www.thejc.com/news/israel-news/33812/proposal-twin-dublin-and-gaza
Hello Chas – here is the reply I sent to Mayor Breen on his website, in case anone else wants to send something as well, here is his blog:
http://gerrybreen.wordpress.com/contact-me/
I’ve left my typos in, apologies for slight incoherence.
(Should not really type at 2:40 am, oh well.)
hello Mayor Breen,
I was very disappointed and a little sickened to learn that you want to twin Dublin and Gaza.
To lend support to a Sharia State governed by terrorists who are not only killing Jews in israel but have massacred, tortured and driven away Christians from their town of Bethlehem is beyond belief.
has Dublin and Ireland in general learned so little from the reign of terror that was the IRa that you want to encourage terrorists by supporting them?
Are you aware that the PLO, the Palestinian Terrorist arm under Yasser Arafat supported and helped to finance the IRA, which cause so much grief to Irish families, both Protestant and Catholic?
Israeli citizens were thrown out of Gaza by their own army so the people of Gaza could develop their own State. Those citizens are now in a very bad way, the children are traumatised and they are scattered all over Israel, many without work and housing.
And for what?
Instead of taking advantage of the opportunity to develop what was now their land, Gaza under Hamas immediately fired more rockets from Gaza into Israel and Hamas, directing these operations, uses their houses as training camps.
They are constantly declaring their hate of Israel and desire to destroy it and the people of Israel utterly – NOT live alongside it – DESTROY it. They do this every single day and have killed so many people already, including their own. It is a tragedy, the amount of damage they have caused innocent people.
How can you as Mayor support them? Have you read their Covenant which states that the only way to fight Israel is with jihad, that peaceful means are not an option? that they fight for Islam, not for coexistence, that they seek to die for Allah?
Surely, too, you are aware of the honour killings in Gaza,which has one of the highest rates in the world in this area. Why would an honourable person support such a state, based on the repulsve enforcement of Sharia law on daighers and wioves of men who cannot control themselves, so seek to control others?
I ask you to reconsider your impulse to twin with Gaza, thus supporting and approving terrorism , torture and murder, and have the compassion to support Israel in her battle against jihadists who have no intention of pursuing peace and coexistence, unless it is the peace of Islam that is only at peace when it dominates and controls everybody – by force, torture, and murder.
thank you for your time.
Jill,
Australia
Great demonstration Chas, and how typical that the red cross has made no effort to see Gulad Shalit.
i have grown even more disillusioned with so-called Christians than I used to, their hypocrisy and downright evil have grown so obvious – your last post being only one piece of evidence.
(No offence intended to any Christians who attend this blog, I’m talking about the ones who talk about compassion while supporting terrorists).
Chas, recently a Christian friend of mine who is fighting his own good fight here in Oz against some Pali nonsense answered a question of mine:
Me, teasingly: Why are you doing this?
Him: I want my Righteous Gentile badge!
In fact, Chas, here and now, I, a Zionist Jew, declare you a
Righteous Gentile! (And a Genial Gentile, what’s more
So, you want a badge?
Thanks Jill! Very kind!
I have an Australian passport actually. I must write about my background one day!
Oh my goodness, I mean GILAD.
Jill,
Sadly it’s not just Dublin City Council that holds such repellent views. Over here in Scotland Glasgow are at it to.
This shocking quote from the deeply unlovely Cllr Deans about sums up how hateful these people are.
“Build ever higher walls and appropriate ever more land and one day the Holocaust card will buy no more friendship or support. Then where will Israel be?”
Hullo Jenny!
Yes, here is Oz we have several councils that twin with “Pali” towns. Despite Chas’ (Are you really an Ozzie by passport?)
sound advice to not let bigots get you down, I am beghinning to feel some serious hate for these people – they simply do not care about Jewish life – well, that’s a tradition in Europe – and obviously do not give a stuff about peace or they could not talk this way. “Peace” is simply a buzz word these days which means “Jewish deaths”.
This “Holocaust card” thing – that is such a cynical, hateful furphy. Firstly no Jew or Israeli has ever put forth such a connection, this is a construction that Jew-haters – including an ex-Prime Minister of ours down here I’m afraid – think up to let themselves off the hook about their alliance with Arab oil and also about Holocaust guilt.
Which is ridiculous – why should anyone who did not push Jews into an oven feel guilty? Feel sad, yes, at the tragedy, at the waste of life and potential. These characters have not a squiz of the courage of their grandfathers who fought against the Nazis – those who did that is.
Maybe they know it and that’s why speak so meanly – let’s face it, the only people fighting these days against brutality are the Israelis, soldiers from various countries in Afghanistan, and a bunch of women’s groups here and there against honour killing and FGM. None of the so-called men in UK or Scottish councils have even a tenth of the ‘nads of these people.
I would love to see them in a bomb shelter shivering with fright as Hamas rockets rain dowen on their homes! Perhaps they could do an exchange with traumatised Israeli children.
I think the only one I respect that I’ve heard of is Peter Davies of Doncaster!
Jewbaiting has been cost-free throughout history. Time that changed.