The Boulder chapter of “Run for Their Lives,” an organization that arranges weekly marches to advocate for the hostages held in Gaza, will no longer publicly advertise its walking route, the group announced on Wednesday. 

The decision comes “following weeks of escalating harassment and threats,” including from a candidate for city council, the group said, less than three months after a Molotov cocktail attack on the group left a participant dead and injured 15 others.

The weekly walks will take place “under heavy security at undisclosed locations,” going forward, the organization said.

In recent weeks, community members have stalked and shouted slurs at participants, such as “genocidal c**t,” “racist” and “Nazi,” and have threatened organizers’ children, according to the Colorado Jewish Community Relations Council. 

Among the demonstrators is a candidate for Boulder City Council, Aaron Stone, who called Rachel Amaru, founder of the Boulder chapter of Run for Their Lives, a “Nazi” during one of the walks. 

Boulder City Council member Tara Winer, who is Jewish and sometimes joins the walks, told Denver’s 9News that she has been targeted by the anti-Israel demonstrators while on the walks. “I have to deal with the agitators every two weeks [at open comment City Council meetings], if not more, and my weekend is my weekend, so I did not want to have to stand there and listen to that again,” she said. “I think that I have been targeted. Yes, absolutely.” 

“This walk has already been the target of deadly violence. Now participants are facing a level of harassment that makes it impossible to continue safely in public view,” Brandon Rattiner, senior director of the Colorado JCRC, said in a statement. 

The torment comes as anti-Israel rhetoric has increased at Boulder City Council meetings and among council members since the Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attacks. Last month, Councilmember Taishya Adams accused the City Council of “continuing to fund this genocide,” in reference to the Israel’s war with Hamas. She also wrote on social media that the killing of Native Americans was the “biggest genocide,” bigger than the Holocaust, and said their communities haven’t received reparations, “unlike Jewish people.” 

Adams also refused to condemn the June 1 firebombing, in which Mohamed Sabry Soliman, an Egyptian national, threw a Molotov cocktail at participants of the solidarity walk for hostages being held by Hamas. Karen Diamond, 81, died weeks later after succumbing to her wounds.

The parents of an 11-year-old Jewish student at a private school in Northern Virginia say their daughter faced months of antisemitic harassment that went unaddressed by school officials, who also cancelled an annual event featuring a Holocaust survivor due to concerns that the event might exacerbate tensions related to the Israel-Hamas war. 

Days after the parents addressed the campus environment with school leadership, all three of their children were expelled, according to a complaint filed on Tuesday with the Office for Civil Rights in the Virginia Attorney General’s Office, Jewish Insider has learned. 

According to the complaint, Kenneth Nysmith, headmaster and owner of The Nysmith School for the Gifted in Herndon, Va., canceled the event with the Holocaust survivor and expressed concern that it might inflame tensions within the school community in light of Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas in Gaza.  

The complaint, filed by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights under Law and Washington-based firm Dillon PLLC, alleges several antisemitic incidents that the parents of the 11-year-old Jewish student say she faced in the months leading up to the cancellation of the Holocaust survivor event. The complaint recounts that in October 2024, their daughter’s history teacher asked students to work together on an art project to create a large drawing featuring the attributes of “strong historical leaders.” The students collaborated on a large artistic rendering of a strong leader, featuring Adolf Hitler’s face. The parents learned of the project only after Nysmith School posted a photo of the children holding up their project, which is reproduced in the complaint.

The complaint also alleges that the 11-year-old student experienced harassment, including being told by other students that Jews are “baby killers” and that they deserved to die because of the Israel-Hamas war. The parents of the student allege that the antisemitic bullying got worse after the school hung a Palestinian flag in the gym.  

The complaint claims that the parents of the student being bullied asked Nysmith to take steps to protect their daughter. Nysmith, according to the complaint, told the parents to tell their daughter to “toughen up.” Two days later, on March 13, the headmaster sent the parents an email stating all three of their children — a son in the second grade and two daughters in the sixth grade — were expelled effective that same day. The complaint does not address any reason that Nysmith provided for the expulsions but noted that the children had no disciplinary record.

“The allegations in this complaint reflect what appear to be a growing trend of the normalization of antisemitism to the extent where a school feels compelled to censor a Holocaust survivor,”  Jeffrey Lang, senior litigation counsel at the Brandeis Center, told JI. “But the antisemitic harassment of a young Jewish student because of what’s happening in Israel is acceptable. It’s that trend that I find very worrisome.”  

According to Lang, the K-8 private school is in violation of the Virginia Human Rights Act’s definition of a “private accommodation,” which requires schools that accept tuition to provide a safe learning environment for all students.