Tweet Gilad Shalit Twitter Campaign

Tweet Gilad Shalit Twitter Campaign

Tweet Gilad Shalit

A Twitter campaign on the 23rd birthday of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit

Tweet Gilad Shalit

Andre Oboler, Zionism On The Web special report, August 16, 2009, with an update from August 26th below

Gilad Shalit's story

Gilad Shalit was 19 and had been serving with the Israeli Defence Forces for less than a year when he was kidnapped by Hamas terrorists in a cross border raid on Sunday the 25th of June 2006. Since then he has been held in captivity in a manner that the International Committee of the Red Cross have described as a violation of international law. The Red Cross have been denied access to visit him (a violation of the Third Geneva Convention) and Shalit has been denied regular communication with his family, something Human Rights Watch have said may amount to torture.

Shalit was kidnapped from Israel by Palestinian Hamas terrorists who crossed into Israel using a tunnel from Gaza. They attacked the Kerem Shalom crossing, killing two soldiers and wounding four in addition to the kidnapping. Hamas spokesman, Sami Abu Zahari, praising the raid and Hamas took responsibility for it.

Why now?

On August 28th Shalit will turn 23. Under normal circumstance he would likely be celebrating at university with friends. Instead, this is likely to be his fourth birthday as Hamas hostage. The ‘Tweet4Shalit’ campaign will remind the world of Gilad Shalit's plight and of Hamas's responsibility both for kidnapping him, and for failing to uphold the Geneva Convention in their treatment of him.

How to take part

  1. Join the Facebook group
  2. "Attend" the Facebook event
  3. Spread the word!
  4. On August 26th, use Twitter to tweet the hashtag "#GiladShalit", you can add a link to information about Gilad if you wish

What do we want?

On Gilad's birthday this year, two days after this campaign, we want the world to remember him. To remember he is still there. We want the world to act. We want Gilad Shalit to be released.

‘Tweet4Shalit’ campaign is supported by Gilad Shalit's family and a number of Jewish and human rights organisations.

Zionism On The Web is proud to support the campaign, and we encourage you to join us in the Facebook group, as a member of the event and on Twitter on the day. We also encourage you to add your organisation to the campaign.

Campaigns Success

Updated by Andre Oboler, August 26, 2009:

Gilad Shalit was made a top trending twitter topic and it held that possition (ranked 2nd) for a large part of the day. So what does this mean?

For a start, if you look at the trend page in a google search you will see Gilad Shalit is mentioned in the Summary:


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This happens because Twitter itself lists "trends" based on hashtags below the search box:


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Another way of viewing this is at WhatTheTrend? where the same list is provided but with user added explanations on what these trends are about. As you can see, Gilad Shalit is battling for attention with a story on the death of Ted Kennedy in the US, and a story on the axing of the Big Brother show in the UK.


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Other sites, like Trendistic, count words and phrases used in tweets and graph them according to popularity (as a percentage of all twitter traffic) for a given period of time. In this graph we can see the campaign hitting 0.20% of all twitter traffic (that's one in every 500 tweets). Note that this graph is given in Australian time, so it covers the period before 6am on the day of the campaign (NY time).


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Another site, and the one that really shows the impact of this campaign is TweetStat, again at around 6am NY time on the day of the campaign. Tweetstat shows the current trending topics but does so with two graphs, one showing how long they have been trending today, and the other how long they have been a trending topic over all. A cloud also shows the relative position of various terms.


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All up this campaign was already a huge success before breakfast time in the US. As the day went on it grew in strength and gained attention not only on Twitter but also in the media.


Gilad Shalit Links