Where is the Outrage? Walk for the Hostages This Sunday

Last week, my good friend Bruce Shaffer sent out a powerful email, along with a post in Boulder Jewish News, with the phrase “Where is the outrage?” The line has stuck with me.

I’ve been on vacation with my husband in Buenos Aires and the coast of Uruguay celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary. And yet, even traveling this far away, I find that I am never very far away in my head. I wake up with the same feelings, and go to bed with the same feelings. I walk the beach and I still think continuously of the hostages. In Buenos Aires, at the Jewish museum, the parallels between the “disappeared” of Argentina in the 1970’s and early 1980’s (a large number of whom were Jewish) and the kidnapped in Gaza was made explicit by an Israeli artist’s exhibit. I will write more about that next week when we dedicate a walk to the Argentinean-Israeli hostages.

This week I keep hearing Bruce’s words over and over again: Where is the outrage? American citizens, British citizens, Argentinian citizens, Thai citizens, Tanzanian citizens, etc. etc. Women brutally raped. Children murdered. Eighty-year-old grandparents held in captivity. How do we keep on going? How do we do our regular lives, take vacations (as I have), do our jobs, go to school? How do the families of the hostages keep on surviving more than 430 days without their family members — the dead and the living? How long will this go on? Four of the 100 hostages (two dead, and two presumed still alive) have been held in Gaza since 2014 — TEN YEARS. Mothers and grandmothers have been gathering in Buenos Aires every week for FIFTY YEARS begging for the return of their children and grandchildren. Where is the outrage?

Boulder is considered one of the fastest growing Jewish communities in North America, with over 10,000 Jews in the City of Boulder and potentially 30,000 in the County. Please — let’s encourage OUR Jewish community to take to the streets and demonstrate their outrage that 100 people of multiple nationalities are still held captive by Hamas in Gaza. Wherever one stands on the question of Israel, a two-state solution, Netanyahu, Trump, etc — all of that can and should be put aside in a demonstration of love and compassion for 100 innocent people — of whom only 64 are pehaps still alive, the rest murdered and their bodies held ransom. This is an issue on which we should all be able to come together.

Please, rabbis, encourage all members of Haver to show up and walk with us. Come with your congregant families after Hebrew School gets out. JCC folk — encourage those who do not belong to a synagogue, or who identify as culturally Jewish, or who send their kids to your preschool — ask them to join us. CU people — Chabad, Hillel, student groups, the Program in Jewish Studies — we need your voices. You are the next generation. Please, come show your support and walk in solidarity with those young people taken from Israel and dragged across the border into Gaza. 

Our walk is family friendly and pet-friendly — everyone is welcome. We need the leaders of the Jewish community to walk with us. We need as many members of the Boulder community at large to walk with us — Jews and nonJews, affiliated and unaffiliated. There are critical days ahead. We continue to hold out hope for a hostage deal, even as Israel now confronts new dangers on its Syrian border. 

Please — share our flyer widely. We will be walking every week until they all come home. We want to walk with you by our side. We need each other in these days.

In peace,

Rachel

PS: There are 231 active Run For Their Lives groups across the world. Wherever you are, whether visiting friends or family or vacationing, you can join a group and walk with them, or walk on your own and post a video in the main Run For Their Lives Facebook group, in our local FB group, or on your own feeds. The initiative’s goal is to get as much press coverage as possible for the hostages through publicizing these walks. 

Please share our local instagram posts: https://www.instagram.com/run4theirlives_boulder/profilecard/?igsh=aG84MTQ0ZWJ4ODY5

Please join our Boulder group on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/g/18k7a9WJ23/

There is a definite sense of solidarity and comfort to be had when walking in a group. But even walking alone, it has been gratifying to meet Israelis who have come up to us in Buenos Aires and in Uruguay because of my “Bring Them Home Now” sweatshirt. 

If you want to order Run For Their Lives gear, you can get it at: https://www.calicustoms.info/runfortheirlives and donations for items can also be made to https://solidarity.bringthemhomenow.net/

Bruce Shaffer will be leading this week’s walk. I hope many of you will be able to join him, and if you can’t be there, please share about the walk to your friends and families.

Our group meets at 1 pm on the corner of Pearl & 8th and walks the length of the Pearl Street Mall and back, stopping at the courthouse for a brief video that the leads of Run For Their Lives include in their weekly recap. The goal is to share the message far and wide (specifically via social media) that the hostages have not been forgotten. This is not a protest; it is a peaceful walk to show solidarity with the hostages and their families, and a plea for their release.

When: Sunday, December 15th at 1 pm
Meet-up: Corner of Pearl & 8th Street