Run4TheirLives – Boulder: Where Is The Outrage?

This week’s news confirming the death of IDF soldier/ hostage Omer Neutra – as of October 7 – was a blow to us all. It took me back to when my friends, Nomi and Amir Baruch, learned the fate of their hostage son, Uriel z”l.

When I first met the Baruchs in November 2023, I expected to awkwardly enter a quiet household constantly anxious for any word about their son. Instead, I awkwardly entered a loud, lively 35th birthday party for their absent Uriel. That’s a snapshot of Nomi and Amir, a deeply religious couple who travelled to pray for their son at so many European graves of the Chassidic masters. Always optimistic, joyful, hopeful. Always confident that Uriel was coming home any day. All of that bled out on the night of March 7, when Purim’s joy left Jerusalem and the Baruchs received that call from the military: gather your family, we’ll be over soon.  

A newly found video conclusively proved that Uriel was shot dead while trying to flee the Nova festival, his lifeless body taken to Gaza to be redeemed for a price. How utterly cruel, I thought as the military reps wrapped up with Nomi and Amir. Five months of expecting Uriel to come home any day, picturing him walking in the door, for this: soldiers walking in to inform of Uriel’s death five months earlier. Uriel wasn’t alive when his family celebrated his birthday. Could it be any worse?

Well, as we’ve seen again and again in these 426-and-counting days, yes. For Omer Neutra’s mom and dad, Orna and Rotem, it was nearly 14 months of waiting, believing, traveling to world capitals, pleading to world leaders. A daily quest for a sign of life and a ‘deal’ to bring Omer home, instead ended in the bitter truth that he was killed at his tank, trying to fend off Hamas invaders. Ended with a moving memorial service, attended by hundreds, comforted by a couple who would know something of this: Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg Polin, known to the world as Hersh’s parents.

Two grieving sets of parents who had thrust themselves onto the world’s biggest stages to save the hostages – the Goldberg-Polins at the DNC Convention, and the Neutras at the RNC Convention – sitting together as mourners. As I watched the memorial, Rotem’s cry at the RNC last summer still echoed in my mind: “Where is the OUTRAGE!”

Yes. Where is the outrage! We – RunForTheirLives-Boulder – remain a silent, dignified expression of our outrage, yet I know that many of us just want to SCREAM! But the more of us there are, the louder and more powerful is the collective outrage and pain that we silently scream into the public space, for all those around us to feel. This Sunday, our ‘scream’ will be dedicated to  Omer Neutra, z”l, and his buddy, hostage Nimrod Cohen, the last of their four tankmates believed to be alive in Gaza. One to mourn for, fallen. One to hope for, still standing. And 99 others, alive and not.

WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE?
WHERE IS YOUR OUTRAGE?

Please join Boulder’s weekly Run4TheirLives walk
Sunday * December 8 * 1:00p.m. * 8th&Pearl