The Other Flotilla

Sea kayakers protest for human rights for Gilad Shalit off of Ashdod (photo by Gil Zohar)

A flotilla of 50 sea kayaks, sail boats and yachts bedecked with yellow ribbons and “freedom for Gilad Shalit” banners made its way south Friday along Israel’s Mediterranean coast from the Ashdod Marina to Nitzanim near the Gaza Strip in an effort to publicize the denial of human rights to the IDF soldier kidnapped four years ago by Palestinian gunmen and held incommunicado since.

The sea kayakers and sailors, who came from across the country to join the marine protest, were addressed by Azam Azam – a Druze Israeli businessman convicted of espionage against Egypt who served 8 ½ years in prison there before being released in a 2004 prisoner swap.

“We ask the world to insist on Gilad Shalit’s right as a prisoner-of-war to be allowed Red Cross visits,” Azam told the kayakers through a bullhorn from the deck of a ship. “I spent 2,050 days in Egyptian prison. Even with the visits of the Red Cross, it wasn’t easy. How much more so for Gilad Shalit.”

Like Azzam, flotilla organizer Michael Karmel of Mitzpe Har Halutz in the Upper Galilee feels a personal connection to the cause of IDF soldiers held prisoner in Arab jails.

“I’m very sensitive to the matter,” said Karmel, 53, today a technical writer, who in 1982 was a new immigrant from Vancouver, Canada drafted into the IDF and seeing action in the First Lebanon War.

“I served in the same Tank Corps [Brig. Gen. Giora Lev’s 90th Division] at the Battle of Sultan Yacoub,” he explains. Stationed in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, some units of rushed forward to seize the strategic village before a cease-fire went into effect only to become cut off and surrounded. Eighteen IDF soldiers died in the battle to extricate the trapped troops, while three of Karmel’s comrades-in-arms – Zachary Baumel, Yehuda Katz and Zvi Feldman - were captured alive by Hezbollah fighters and paraded through Damascus on top of their disabled M-48 Patton tank. The three POWs have never been heard from since.

“I watched as Baumel, Katz and Feldman were forgotten,” said Karmel with bitterness in explaining the unusual protest he had organized. “The Syrians weren’t held responsible their disappearance and murder. And of course there’s Ron Arad – who we also know was alive [when captured] and murdered.”

Karmel’s worst nightmare is that Gilad Shalit will share a similar fate.

“Of course Gilad Shalit is alive. People ask what price should be paid [for his release]. I say he’s worth a million of them. At the same time, Israel should exact the death penalty for terrorists. But Gilad Shalit at any price.”

Karmel got the idea for his nautical protest following Israel’s botched May 31 raid on a humanitarian aid flotilla bound for the Hamas-ruled territory in which nine Turkish civilians were killed. Initially world reaction condemned Israel until it became clear that IDF naval commandos were attacked first by so-called peace activists. The flotilla participants had refused to take a letter to be delivered to Shalit.

“Why isn’t the world giving an ultimatum to Hamas demanding Red Cross visits?,” asked Karmel. “Israel’s treatment of its [Palestinian] prisoners is like a 5-star hotel, with conjugal visits and all kinds of rights. The aim today is to shed light on the fact that nobody is interested in symmetry of human rights for both sides.”