Postcards for Gilad Shalit Presented to the American Red Cross

Members of the Jewish Agency’s Board of Trustees, along with the head of the Jewish Agency delegation in North America, met in Washington on Tuesday, September 22 with senior officials of the North American Red Cross. They handed over to the officials hundreds of postcards written to Gilad Shalit by American citizens, including children, mainly from Jewish communities across the United States. The meeting was attended by Gail McGovern, CEO of the American Red Cross, and Mary Werntz, head of the delegation of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

In addition to the postcards, the Jewish Agency representatives handed to the Red Cross officials thousands of signatures from an online petition which the Jewish Agency had publicized on its website, demanding that the Red Cross work immediately to receive information about Gilad Shalit and grant him all the basic rights owed to him according to the Geneva Convention. The petition calls upon the Red Cross to continue exerting pressure on the Hamas government in Gaza to allow the organization’s representatives to visit the captured soldier.

Read more here.

Photo Credit: Evelyn Hockstein