Tie a Yellow Ribbon

The 1973 uber kitsch pop song " Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round The Old Oak tree"by the group Dawn was a major hit and opens with the line, "I'm coming home, I've done my time". It tells the story of a returning convict who has written to his wife asking her to tie a yellow ribbon around a tree, if she wants him back. If he does not see a ribbon, then he will accept that she does not him and not bother her again. So why am I on about 1970s kitsch, you may well ask.

In nineteenth century America it is said that some women would tie a yellow ribbon in their hair as a sign of devotion to their husbands and sweethearts serving in the US Cavalry. Old movie buffs will remember the John Wayne film, "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon". In the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979, when US diplomats were held hostage by Iranian students (if i am not mistaken the current Iranian President was involved in the incident), a yellow Ribbon campaign was set up to show solidarity and support for the hostages. The yellow ribbon has quite a history.

Today I tied a yellow ribbon to my car (like many others in the country and around the world) in support of Gilad Shalit. Four years ago on this day, Gilad was kidnapped during an attack , which lest we forget; killed two Israeli soldiers, Lt. Hanan Barak and Staff Sergeant Pavel Slutzker and wounded four others.

For four years Gilad Shalit has been held hostage by Hamas. And there's the rub. Gilad Shalit is indeed a hostage not a prisoner. He is held by a terrorist organisation which refuses to divulge his whereabouts, his physical condition or allow any visitation by the Red Cross. We have no knowledge of the conditions in which he has been kept for these past four years, save for one video released in September 2009. In contrast, take for instance probably the most high profile prisoner sitting in an Israeli jail, Marwan Barghouti. Serving life imprisonment for murder and terror offences, earlier this year, Barghouti earned his PHD in political science from Cairo University, facilitated by the Israeli prison service. Barghouti is one of thousands of Palestinians who take advantage of the opportunity to study by correspondence in a host of international and Israeli universities.

The contrasts between the Palestinian prisoner and the Israeli hostage are there for all to see. Unfortunately the world chooses not to see or not to care. Now I do not doubt that there are Palestinian prisoners who are held without good reason or who have been ill treated by the Israeli authorities, and such incidents need to be investigated and rectified. However, the bottom line is that we know where the Palestinian prisoners are, we know how they are. They have access to legal council, and to their families.

The thousands of yellow ribbons tied in solidarity with Gilad send a strong message to the Shalit family, that they are not alone, that theirs is a struggle shared by the whole country and all civilised people. They are a message to Hamas and to the wider world that we will not abandon our children, that we will not forget them. Unlike Hamas, we are not prepared to callously sacrifice them or cynically leave them to their fate.

The hero in the song returned to "a hundred yellow ribbons round the old oak tree". If we need to tie a million ribbons, or ten million ribbons, we must keep tying them so as Gilad will come home and so he will get to see them on his return.