Two Federation of Zionist Youth leaders have launched an online petition calling on Gordon Brown to make the release of Gilad Shalit a priority.

Aaron Collins and Samuel Franklin used the Downing Street website to set up the petition after a video of Shalit was released last month. An FZY spokesman said: “French President Nicolas Sarkozy has come out and declared that Gilad’s release is top of his agenda, and we hope that Mr Brown will do the same.

“We are aiming for 5,000 signatures on our petition and are confident that this will be sufficient to garner a personal response from the Prime Minister.”

See the petition on the Downing Street website: http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/GSchalit/