https://www.city-journal.org/article/terror-attack-boulder-colorado-mohamed-soliman
Since November 2023—“fairly regularly, sometimes weekly”—a group of Boulder, Colorado, residents have held marches advocating for the release of Hamas’s hostages in Gaza. The regularity of these marches likely contributed to Sunday’s targeted attack, in which a man named Mohamed Soliman allegedly threw Molotov cocktails at the marchers while yelling “end Zionists” and “Palestine is free.” The FBI is investigating the incident as an “act of terror;” the Department of Homeland Security has claimed Soliman was an illegally resident Egyptian national.
Soliman’s assault is the third high-profile anti-Israel and anti-Semitic terror attack in the U.S. in recent months. It follows the double murder outside of the Washington, D.C. Jewish Museum less than ten days ago and the attempted firebombing of Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro’s home in April. The increasing tempo of violence makes the pattern hard to ignore: the American anti-Israel movement has radicalized.
It is also hard not to draw a connection between the rhetoric used by radical protesters over the past two years and the recent wave of violence. “There is only one solution,” students and marchers have chanted, “Intifada! Revolution!” This—lighting humans on fire to advance your political goals—is what an Intifada looks like. And until we treat it as such, and respond with the full force of the law, it will continue to endanger lives.
The Intifada, after all, was never a peaceful movement. Literally meaning “uprising,” the first Intifada (1987–1990) and second (2000–2005) were marked by frequent violence, with the second resulting in nearly 1,000 Israels killed or injured. Any Israeli who lived through the second Intifada will tell you that they still think twice about where to sit on a bus, remembering the ever-present risk of suicide bombings.
