With Ceasefire Deal Announced, Hostage Awareness Events Not Stopping

Shortly after Hamas took more than 250 hostages from Israel in the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks, Sharon Feinstein-Rosenblum was looking to do something. As an Israeli now living in the Twin Cities, “the first thing I wanted to do is to go back, but I have kids. I can’t just leave my kids,” she said. ”It has been really hard to be away.”

Feinstein-Rosenblum started raising awareness of the plight of the hostages soon after the events of Oct. 7. As Israel and Hamas appear to have a ceasefire deal that will see the return of hostages, she and others who have been active in helping raise awareness reflected on what the past 15 months have been like. 

Feinstein-Rosenblum started organized walks around Bde Maka Ska and Lake Harriet of people – many moms themselves – pushing empty strollers to remind people that many children were being held hostage by the terrorist group that controls Gaza.

“Hamas took little kids hostage and walking with those empty strollers, I felt, was a good and strong statement,” she said. “We put a whole lot of guidelines [about] what to say or what to do if someone talks to you. The intent was absolutely not to get into an argument with someone who disagrees or feels different. [It was] just to increase awareness in a respectful and peaceful way.”

Fifteen months after Hamas’ attack, there are still two children who were kidnapped being held – Ariel and Kfir Bibas. The first stage of the three-stage ceasefire deal would see Hamas release 33 women, children, and men over the age of 50. Israel says most of the 33 are alive, but has not said which hostages it expects to be dead.

“I’m not allowing myself to overly be excited, because we know that this is good, that it’s happening,” Feinstein-Rosenblum said. “Although there’s a very high cost for it, the cost, the price that the Israeli government is paying is very high. However, it has to be done.”

Hadassah Dukes started the local gathering of Run For Their Lives, a movement started by a group of Israelis in the Bay Area in California, in collaboration with the Hostage and Missing Families Forum (#BringThemHomeNow). The group meets every Sunday morning for a short walk. Dukes had contacted the organization to see if a local chapter had been, or was in the process of, starting.

“She called me back and basically told me I was starting it in Minnesota,” Dukes said. 

Dukes is helped Marilyn Levi-Baumgartner who helps promote the events in certain circles, and Lynn Golberstein, who researches the hostages to share background information before the walk. 

At the event to commemorate the first anniversary of the attack and kidnappings, Dukes said that Levi-Baumgartner hoped for 110 people to come walk to honor the 110 hostages that were known at the time. More than 400 people attended. 

The group now meets to walk part of Bde Maka Ska, but not to walk the whole lake.

“It’s not supposed to be something that takes a huge amount of time,” Dukes said. “It’s like a 20-minute thing of people’s Sunday morning. We try to do it early so it doesn’t interrupt people’s days too much, but late enough that people can show up.”

The group walks holding signs and flags of the countries where the hostages are from. 

“It as a group of local residents who want to raise awareness make sure that people aren’t forgetting that there are hostages,” Dukes said. 

Levi-Baumgartner said that her nephew made Aliyah and spent 200 days in the reserves with the IDF. But over the Thanksgiving, he and his family came to Minnesota. One of his four children took part in the walk with Levi-Baumgarten, holding the sign of someone he knew. 

“It was moving for him,” Levi-Baumgartner said. 

“We wanted to be able to do something tangible and this was something tangible that they could do to raise awareness.”

The same attempt to raise awareness takes place in St. Paul, every Friday afternoon for the last 9 months. Leslie Strohm and Alison Savin started the group that’s taken on the name “Friday Jews Supporting Israel.” Each week from 4-5 p.m., a group gathers on the southwest corner of Snelling and Portland to hold Israeli flags, and signs supporting Israel and the release of hostages. 

The group had started meeting a block further south as a counter to a weekly pro-peace gathering started by Mothers Against Military Madness that has been in the location, Strohm said, for more than 20 years. 

“Friday Jews Supporting Israel" in St. Paul on Jan. 10, 2025. (Courtesy).

“Friday Jews Supporting Israel” in St. Paul on Jan. 10, 2025. (Courtesy).

Strohm said her husband, Jim, had a small Israeli flag taken from him. It was spit on, thrown into a puddle and stomped on before he could retrieve it.

“At the beginning it was awful,” Strohm said. “They came over and harassed us. They bullied us, yelling and screaming.

“I am very into not engaging with them. We’re not there to argue or talk. I’m an argumentative person, but If I can keep quiet, you can.”

Savin said there’s a part of her that’s surprised the group has held together each week, but finds something almost every week that makes it worthwhile.

“Last summer when it was uncomfortably hot, someone went across the street to the convenience store and bought a bunch of bottles of water for us. Another week, a rabbi brought us Shabbat candles and another time bought us flowers,” she said. 

The best story, she said, was the one time when someone was in the midst of the pro-Palestinian group with an Israeli flag. The person – a Pakistani-American student from the University of Minnesota – was berated and hit by flag poles before being pulled over to the pro-Israel gathering.

“In between all the [middle] fingers and swearing, people honk and give support,” Savin said. “That’s what keeps us going.”

With the ceasefire agreement, possibly, nearing reality, the need to raise awareness isn’t going away.

“Leslie and I will be there until all 98 are home,” Savin said. 

Said Feinstein-Rosenblum: “Things get derailed, so we wait. We need to wait for this to be completed, for everybody [who’s alive] to be home for rehab and coping and healing. And those that have died for respectful burial. For the rest of us, once it’s all done, that will be the opportunity to start our healing process.”