A rally was held in Mineola hosted by the Jewish Community Relations Council of Long Island. State officials, religious leaders and Nassau County residents Thursday condemned the kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers in Israel. On June 12, Eyal Yifrach, 19, Gilad Shaar, 16, and Naftali Frenkel, 16, a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen, disappeared on their way home from school in Gush Etzion.
“Every parent who sends his kids to school every day — in Long Island or in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem — knows that they want them back and can imagine the feeling of not having them,” said Shahar Azani, a spokesman for the Consulate General of Israel in New York.
Attending the rally was also Rabbi Anchelle Perl, director of Chabad in Mineola who issued the following statement: The late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir once captured this problem dramatically: “Peace will come when the Arabs start loving their children more than they hate ours.”
This is the root of this tragedy. Terrorists are well aware of a unique Jewish “weakness”—our fanatical obsession with the value of a single life. For we truly believe that everyone, every human being is created equally in the image of G-d.
It’s important to galvanize and to do everything to draw attention to this despicable act of kidnapping children. We stand in solidarity with people of Israel and particularly the families involved, even if we don’t know them, we feel close to them. We pray for the safe return of the children to their families. These children are not strangers to us, they are our kids.
Let us all unite and increase our acts of goodness and kindness to help the safe return of the three boys to their homes.
Yes awesome!