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.