Sixteen-year-old Gabrielle Flaum of Short Hills was in Israel during the summer of 2006 as part of a National Federation of Temple Youth program. Four days after their arrival, Hizbullah forces abducted Israeli soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev; another soldier, Gilad Shalit, had been kidnapped on June 25.

“She experienced first-hand the horror of the war and what it did to Israeli soldiers and their families,” said her mother, Nancy Kislin Flaum, a religious school teacher at Temple Sharey Tefilo-Israel in South Orange, where the family are members. “She came home determined to let the community know what went on.”

In September, Gabrielle and Sam Cantor, both juniors at Millburn High School and students at the Hebrew high school that meets at the temple, decided to do their part to raise awareness of the plight of the three abducted Israelis.

They organized a group of classmates to form SOS: Save Our Soldiers.

Since then, the ranks of supporters have swelled to include additional TSTI students, including young people from Maplewood, South Orange, Short Hills, Millburn, and Summit.

As part of a TSTI mitzva project that began in September, Gabrielle and Sam, 17, organized a petition campaign that has so far collected more than 200 signatures from their high school and synagogue community.

Following her visit to Israel, Gabrielle said, “I wanted to keep involved in the Jewish community.”

She said copies of the petition will be sent to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and members of Congress.

SOS members are also selling dog tags, purchased from Freethesoldiers.org in honor of the Israelis.

In addition, Gabrielle and Sam are scheduled to head a delegation of students at a March 1 meeting with former Gov. Don DiFrancesco and Assemblyman Kip Bateman (R-Dist. 16). The goal is to enlist their help in securing a resolution in the NJ State Legislature calling for the release of the three soldiers.

Gabrielle, who takes advanced placement courses in government and politics, disagrees with the idea that today’s teens are disaffected. As evidence she offered the participation of more than 1,200 Jewish teens at the NFTY convention held in Philadelphia Feb. 16-20.

“[Adults] say we are the generation that dropped the vase, but we’re not because we have the potential to do so much, and we are doing it,” she said.