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If you are looking for me on a Sunday morning, look first in the parking lot at Country Pointe in Plainview. You’ll find me together with some of my children and dozens of other community members preparing to walk. Why are we walking? For their lives. For the lives of the 23 living hostages still held in Gaza and the families of the 35 waiting to give their loved ones a proper burial.
There are groups in more than 230 communities worldwide who take that same walk, in conjunction with the organization Run For Their Lives.
Run for Their Lives is an apolitical global organization with the sole mission of walking peacefully to raise awareness of the hostages still held in captivity by Hamas in Gaza.
We run (walk, really to be honest), for their lives. Some come wrapped in Israeli flags, we carry signs and posters — and as we’re walking down Old Country Road, people honk at us. In support. The same thing happens across the world.
That changed for one of our groups in Boulder, Colorado last Sunday. The peaceful walk was brutally disrupted in a violent assault in which a man threw Molotov cocktails, injuring several in the crowd while yelling "Free Palestine." It was the first such attack on the thousands of walks worldwide that have taken place since October 7.
The attack has shaken many of us to our core, but as the Colorado group’s leader said, "it has also united us in our mission. We will keep praying with our feet. We will keep saying their names. We will stand up to antisemitism."
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This Sunday, more than 230 groups worldwide will continue praying with their feet. Locally, there is a group that gathers at the Smith Haven Mall to begin their walk. They’ll be there this Sunday with enhanced police presence. And they have extended us an invitation to join them — this Sunday in solidarity with the group from Boulder, and every Sunday until every last hostage is home.
As we say each week as we begin our walk — Bring Them Home, Bring Them Home Now.
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