Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was abducted by Hamas in a cross-border raid in 2006, a few months before his 20th birthday. This is what he looked like as a teenager:
Shalit, now 25, has finally been released, in exchange for over a thousand Palestinian prisoners, including perpetrators of many serious terror attacks. (This is strategically crazy, of course, but politically irresistable given the emotional resonance of the Shalit case in Israel; in a country with universal conscription, to many he became not just someone’s son, but everyone’s son.) This is what he looked like today, during the shameful spectacle of a clearly-coerced interview with Egyptian State TV, just before his return to Israel:
It doesn’t appear that feeding him well, or keeping him in good health, was a top priority for Hamas.
