Some 200 Jews protested outside the President’s home on Tuesday, in an effort to make sure that the Jewish nationalist prisoners are not forgotten.
The protestors demanded that Peres either pardon or allow vacation and other rights to the 17 Jewish nationalist prisoners – particularly in light of the rights and "goodwill gesture" releases routinely granted to Arab terrorist prisoners.
The police re-located the event outside a secondary entrance to President Peres’ official residence, because of the scheduled visit of Italian President Giorgio Napolitano. However, the participants, from all over Judea and Samaria and other areas of Israel, made their presence – and their cause – clearly felt.
Among the speakers were former refusenik prisoner Yosef Mendlevitch, Temple Institute head Rabbi Yisrael Ariel, and MK Aryeh Eldad.
Ofer Gamliel, a father of seven sentenced to 15 years for his role in an aborted bombing of an Arab school during the height of the Arab terrorist war against Israel, has never received a vacation – and he has been hunger-striking in protest for the past ten weeks. He has been in prison since May 2002. Other Jewish prisoners who do not receive vacation rights include Shlomi Dvir (father of five, sentenced to 15 years) and Yarden Morag of Bat Ayin (father of four, sentenced to 12 years).
The crowd was also addressed by Rabbi Gadi Ben-Zimra, the head of Ulpanat Maaleh Levonah (girls’ high school), Lt.-Col. Yitzik Shadmi, Prof. Hillel Weiss, Baruch Marzel, Noam Federman, David Libman, and others.
Families of the prisoners, the Honenu civil rights organization, and other extra-parliamentary groups took part in the protest as well.