EXTREMISMFamiliar Attempts to Justify and Downplay Antisemitic Violence Follow Latest Attack on Jewish Community
Reactions to the Boulder, Colorado attack followed a familiar pattern to the 21 May 2025 Washington, D.C. murder of a couple leaving an event for young Jewish. Many of the same anti-Zionist groups and influencers who celebrated or justified D.C. shooting suspect Elias Rodriguez’s actions reacted similarly to the Boulder attack. other extremists also responded with predictable antisemitism and conspiracy theories by claiming the attack was a “false flag” or blaming Jews.
Reactions to the latest attack targeting the Jewish community, in which 12 people were injured in a firebombing assault on a “Run for Their Lives” event in Boulder, Colorado, for Israeli hostages in Gaza, followed a familiar pattern to the May 21, 2025, murder of a couple leaving an event for young Jewish professionals at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C.
Many of the same anti-Zionist groups and influencers who celebrated or justified D.C. shooting suspect Elias Rodriguez’s actions reacted similarly to the Boulder attack, while other extremists also responded with predictable antisemitism and conspiracy theories by claiming the attack was a “false flag” or blaming Jews. Others downplayed the attack or legitimized it as a response to the war in Gaza.
The suspect, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, of Colorado Springs, CO, was arrested on site on June 1, 2025, after allegedly using a makeshift flamethrower and homemade Molotov cocktails to attack Jewish community members who gathered there weekly to bring awareness to the hostages kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, 2023, and still held in Gaza.
Soliman indicated his motive for the attack in comments made at the scene and in subsequent interviews with law enforcement, including yelling “Free Palestine” during the attack and later stating that he wanted to “kill all Zionist people and wished they were all dead.”
The assault on Sunday, June 1, 2025, further highlights an unprecedentedly high threat environment for the Jewish community across the U.S.
Anti-Zionist Reactions Justifying and Downplaying the Attack
Radical anti-Zionist groups Bronx Anti-War Coalition and Unity of Fields, which both openly and repeatedly glorified Rodriguez’s alleged actions over the past week and a half, reacted similarly to Soliman’s alleged attack. The Bronx Anti-War Coalition posted shortly after the attack: “May all Zionists live in perpetual fear and paranoia until the day the criminal entity crumbles.” Unity of Fields reposted their own tweet, initially published in the aftermath of the D.C. shooting, that read, “We ain’t condemning shit.”
Various other anti-Zionist accounts and influencers tried to downplay Soliman’s actions and shift the blame to Israel. Palestinian-American author and poet Remi Kanazi shared a series of posts about the attack with his 93,000 X followers, including writing: “All of a sudden Zionists are against burning people alive. Doesn’t seem to bother them as Israel does it to Palestinians on the daily.”
