Do what you have to do - for Gilad

Days of Our Lives [1]. It’s a marathon US TV soapie. It began in 1965, and it’s still going. I can’t recall seeing even one episode of it, but I must have because its sombre opening voiceover’s imprinted in my memory: ‘Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives’ [2]. Indeed. It’s easy to forget that for each of us the sand runs down; and once down it doesn’t go back up. Absorbed in the hurly-burly hustle of whatever it is we do, it often takes birthdays, anniversaries and other life milestones to bring us back to reality. To make us realise what’s important. The coming Saturday is Gilad Shalit’s 24th birthday [3]. When he was kidnapped by Hamas 1,523 days ago, on 25 June 2006, he was aged 19. So this is his fifth birthday in captivity. For every single one of these 1,523 days Hamas has held him incommunicado. Totally illegally. Inhumanely. Abhorrently. The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations has launched a global campaign asking people to send Gilad greetings for his 24th birthday. The greetings will be presented to the International Committee of the Red Cross for delivery to Gilad [4]. I normally avoid online campaigns. But this one’s exceptional. If you also identify with Gilad, click here [5] and do what you have to do. None of us knows how much sand’s left to run through our hourglass. Gilad knows even less of his.