BOULDER, Colo. — Thousands turned out here June 8 to participate in the Run for Their Lives, one week after the life-threatening firebomb attack on a similar, but much smaller, action. Today’s walk took place alongside the annual Boulder Jewish Festival. Participants in both aimed to show their support for Israel’s right to exist as a refuge from Jew-hatred and pogroms, and to demand Hamas release the remaining hostages the thug group still holds.
When Mohamed Sabry Soliman hurled his Molotov cocktails at last week’s Run, he shouted “Free Palestine.” He told police his intention was to kill all the “Zionists.”
Hamas and its allies in Gaza still hold an estimated 55 hostages in their tunnels. Moshe Emilio Lavi, whose brother-in-law Omri Miran is a hostage, spoke at the Boulder action. He said he came to thank people for their activities and to stand with those coming out after the recent deadly attacks on Jews. He pointed to the firebomb attack here and the killing of two Israeli Embassy workers, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, in Washington, D.C., May 21. The gunman there also shouted, “Free, free Palestine.”
“It’s important to be present here, to come out and show that we’re here, standing strong,” Rabbi Bobbie Rosenberg told this Militant correspondent and another Socialist Workers Party member who had come from Seattle to participate. “Some people tend to hide, so they don’t appear Jewish in public. We say, the response should be to show even more so that we are Jewish in public.” He got a subscription to the Militant.
Video-recorded messages from other families of some of the hostages in Israel were played. “Your strength helps us keep going. We thank you for that,” one family member said.
“Our focus is on bringing the hostages home by any means necessary,” Miri Kornfeld, a co-coordinator of Run for Their Lives in Denver, told the rally. “It just shows where we’re at in this world that the hostages’ families have come here to support us. We will continue to walk on their behalf until all of them come home.”
We met other participants in the action who had traveled a long way to be here, including some who weren’t Jewish. Michael Jolls, a filmmaker from Chicago and a Catholic who participates in similar protests there, said, “We’ve had cars rush at us at our Run for Their Lives and other such incidents. Luckily, no one has been hurt. We need to be more united against this radical hatred.”
We gave almost everyone we met a copy of a statement, “Protest killings and attack on Jews from Washington, D.C., to Boulder, Colorado!” by Norton Sandler, the SWP candidate for governor of California, and Laura Garza, the party’s candidate for mayor of Los Angeles.
The fight against Jew-hatred is a life-and-death question for the entire working class, we told fellow marchers. We back Israel’s right to defend itself, to defeat Hamas and carry out targeted strikes to eliminate the reactionary Iranian regime’s nuclear capabilities, which have only one aim — to wipe out the Jews.
Many said they were glad we had come.