Noam Shalit, the Israeli father whose campaign led to the release of his captive son, dies at 68

(JTA) — When Noam Shalit first realized that his son, Gilad, had disappeared, his ideas turned to his personal father.

Noam’s twin brother, Yoel, went lacking within the Golan Heights in 1973 in the course of the Yom Kippur Warfare. Their father instantly set off for the battle battered plateau to seek for Yoel, who was 19, the identical age as Gilad when Hamas militants kidnapped him in in 2006 a cross-border raid.

Yoel was finally recognized among the many lifeless. The concern that Gilad, an introverted basketball fan, would possibly share the identical destiny drove Noam Shalit to shed his pure inclination for privateness, and to grow to be the face of a marketing campaign to reclaim his son, culminating in a prisoner trade in 2011.

“It was like being thrown over 30 years backward,” Noam Shalit advised The New York Occasions simply months after he launched the marketing campaign to free Gilad.

Noam Shalit died Wednesday, at age 68, precisely 13 years after transferring together with his spouse right into a tent exterior the prime minister’s residence in Jerusalem to name consideration to his son’s captivity. He was affected by leukemia, Ynet, the Israeli information web site, reported.

Benny Gantz, the protection minister, who was navy chief in 2011 and helped negotiate Gilad Shalit’s launch, mentioned in his condolences that “he by no means as soon as gave up the hope that he would see his son once more.”

His son’s seize compelled Shalit, an engineer, to grow to be the general public face of a motion. His fierce paternal love throbbed by the cloak of his calm demeanor, and he earned the devotion of Israeli dad and mom, locked in a cycle of lavishing consideration on their kids after which relinquishing them to the maw of perpetual threat of loss of life or seize.

“I’m right here as a result of if it was my son, I’d need somebody to help me as properly.” Michal Naamani, a protester handing out yellow ribbons, advised the Jewish Telegraphic Company in 2011, not lengthy earlier than the trade of 1,027 Palestinian safety prisoners received Shalit’s launch.

“Gilad Shalit is a nationwide trauma,” Sima Kadmon, a Yediot Ahronot columnist, wrote in 2010. “He’s the image of our powerlessness. Of the truth that the Israel Protection Forces can not clear up every thing and of the truth that not every thing might be fastened by pressure, and maybe, of the truth that not every thing can all the time be resolved.”

Noam Shalit was relentless, and irked successive Israeli governments, a lot as they paid lip service to his marketing campaign. Earlier huge exchanges of a handful of Israeli prisoners or corpses for hundreds of suspected terrorists had come to be seen as a foul deal: Generally, the terrorists went again to work nearly instantly upon being freed.

However it was arduous to withstand Noam Shalit’s regular marketing campaign. Posters of Gilad Shalit in a uniform, skinny, boyish and awkward, plastered the nation’s public areas. Noam Shalit appealed on to Palestinians. He supplied Hamas to grow to be a hostage to launch his son. In 2010, Noam Shalit led a march from his village in Israel’s north to Jerusalem. “We received’t wait any longer in our residence,” he mentioned, setting out on the march.

“This can be a debate between the pinnacle and coronary heart, and everybody has each,” Yaacov Amidror, a normal within the Israeli reserves, mentioned on the time, reflecting the favored safety institution view. “Those that let the pinnacle take over really feel that there’s a restrict to what a state ought to pay. I consider that in precept negotiations shouldn’t be held with terror organizations.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finally took one other view, acceding to the hearts of Noam Shalit and his supporters and made the commerce. Victims of the terrorists amongst these freed shed tears of frustration upon their launch, however scenes of Gilad and Noam reuniting overwhelmed the information, and polls confirmed Israelis supported the phrases of the discharge.

Noam Shalit tarried for some time within the limelight, considering a run for Knesset in 2012 on the Labor Occasion ticket — his expertise together with his son nurtured a contempt for arduous strains, and he mentioned he would speak to Hamas to make peace.

Quickly, nevertheless, the household returned to its non-public methods. If Noam Shalit made a public look, it was to thank supporters, to whom he remained intensely grateful. “The sensation that the nation was behind us was overwhelming,” he advised Israeli expats in California in 2014. “What began as a lonely campaign became a mass motion.”

In 2020, Gilad Shalit and his fiancee, Nitzan Shabbat, introduced through Instagram that they have been engaged ; The photograph of the strong, intensely glad couple was their one concession to a public that questioned what occurred to the wan bespectacled boy who disappeared.

After they married 5 months later, the household invited household and shut mates, who have been requested to signal nondisclosure agreements.