HAIFA (Press Release)–University of Haifa students have joined the public fight for the release of Gilad Shalit and decided to make their final project for a course in the School of Political Sciences a campaign for Shalit’s release. A survey that the students carried out among 200 respondents as a preparatory step for the project reveals that 87.5% of the Israeli public are interested in taking an active role in the fight for the release of Gilad Shalit.
The final project for the “Political Campaign” course given by Dr. Israel Waismel-Manor is the production of a short video, which each student creates on the topic that the class selects at the beginning of the course. At the end of the course, all of the videos are uploaded to YouTube and are virally distributed on the Web. The students are guided in their productions by theoretical material that is studied in the lecture hall and by a preliminary survey that they carry out to assess the basic points to focus upon.
This year the students chose the release of Gilad Shalit as their final project topic, more specifically joining “Gilad’s Army of Friends”. They began by taking a random survey amongst 200 respondents from different areas of Israel. This revealed that while 87.5% of the Israeli public are interested in actively contributing to Gilad’s release, only 28% have actually taken any type of action. The survey also shows that the public is highly aware of the release campaign. This is well reflected in the average answer to the question “How many days has Gilad been held hostage?”: 1,219; which is very close to the actual number of 1,239 days at the time of the survey.
Additional results of the survey show that 62% support the release of terrorists with blood on their hands to achieve an exchange deal; 16% are against it and another 22% are undecided. Only 20% of the respondents believe that the government has done all it can in order to bring Gilad back home and that the main factor impeding the release on the Israeli side is the prime minister. The students say that they are most motivated by the fact that only 36.5% of the respondents strongly believe that it is possible to bring Gilad home before the end of 2009.
“A central issue that has arisen from this survey is that the word ‘army’ in ‘Gilad’s Army of Friends’ deters people, as it infers that they would have to dedicate a lot of time to being active. I also thought so before we began this campaign, but now I know that it is more of an expression of support and solidarity and is intended to achieve a petition of one million names. This is a point I mean to convey in my video,” says student Moran Nof. She explained that she joined this particular course knowing that it combines campaigns with social involvement, but she did not expect to find herself a member of “Gilad’s Army of Friends” just a few weeks later. “Everyone wants to help out, but they are mainly doing it in theory only. I hope that our campaign will make people do something for real,” she concludes.
“I am very glad that the students have chosen to take what they are learning in the course and implement it for a worthy cause. This will be the first time that I hope not to need the videos at all, and pray that we will be able to watch them for the first time with Gilad at our side,” says Dr. Waismel-Manor.
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Preceding provided by the University of Haifa