Pearl Street in Boulder, Colorado, should have been busy on Sunday with tourists, cyclists, and families enjoying the eve of Shavuot. Instead, smoke filled the air when Mohamed Sabry Soliman, a 45-year-old Egyptian national, allegedly shouted “Free Palestine” and “End Zionism” before spraying a peaceful pro-Israel walking group with a homemade flamethrower and hurling Molotov cocktails.
Eight people aged 67-88, among them a Holocaust survivor, suffered burns; several remained in critical condition. The FBI quickly determined that the assault was an ideologically motivated act of terror and a federal hate crime, and Soliman now faces multiple felony charges.
The horror in Boulder did not occur in a vacuum. Barely ten days earlier, two Israeli Embassy staff members were murdered outside Washington’s Capital Jewish Museum by a gunman who likewise cried out for Palestine.
The Anti-Defamation League’s most recent audit recorded 9,354 antisemitic incidents in the US last year – the highest total since monitoring began and almost double the previous record. Nearly three-fifths of those cases were tied directly to hostility toward Israel. What starts with campus chants to “globalize the intifada” now too often ends with bullets or burning fuel on America’s streets.
American Jews understandably ask why extremists feel free to translate online venom into street violence. Part of the answer lies in social-media echo chambers that glorify Hamas and recycle blood libels. Part rests with mainstream institutions that normalize eliminationist language, equating Zionism with Nazism or accusing Jews collectively of genocide, while insisting such rhetoric is merely “anti-war.” When authorities hesitate to name that ideology, they send an implicit message that Jewish lives are negotiable collateral in a political debate.
Closing it starts with swift, visible federal action. Prosecutors should employ existing hate-crime statutes whenever anti-Zionist violence singles out Jews, and do so in a way that deters would-be imitators. Homeland Security and the FBI ought to create a standing fusion cell dedicated to antisemitic threats, pooling digital intelligence so individuals such as Soliman – who reportedly overstayed a visa after a rejected asylum application – are flagged before they slip through bureaucratic cracks. Congress should at least double the heavily oversubscribed Non-Profit Security Grant Program, whose funds for cameras, bollards, and trained guards are today seriously inadequate to the threat faced by Jewish institutions.
Universities need special scrutiny. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act obliges them to protect students from ethnic harassment, yet too many campuses tolerate intimidation of Jewish undergraduates. Institutions must know their federal funding is at risk when they fail that duty. Social media companies likewise have responsibilities. If Meta and X can police copyrighted music, they can certainly take down content that calls for violence against Jews or applauds Hamas atrocities.
Antisemitism, like a virus, leaps borders with ease. European security services report a parallel spike in assaults and synagogue vandalism. By making the fight against Jew-hatred a standing item at the Summit for Democracy and in NATO consultations, Washington can help allies share intelligence and treat antisemitism as the transnational extremist movement it has become.
Hamas’s war is fought not only beneath Rafah, but also on Colorado footpaths
Israel is watching closely. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the Boulder assault a “direct result of blood libels,” while opposition leader Yair Lapid traced a straight line from incendiary slogans to literal fire. For Israelis, the sight of elderly Jews attacked on American soil for marching in solidarity with hostages is a brutal reminder that Hamas’s war is ideological as well as territorial, a campaign fought not only beneath Rafah but also on Colorado footpaths and Ivy League greens.
The flames on Pearl Street have been extinguished, yet the ideology that lit them still smolders. The US possesses the legal tools, the intelligence capacity, and the moral obligation to stamp it out.
Protecting Jews’ right to walk, pray, and speak without fear is not a favor to one minority; it is a test of America’s democratic spine. A nation proud of safeguarding liberty must show it will not let hatred – whether draped in politics or religion – turn public spaces into battlegrounds. Boulder’s nightmare should become the moment when well-meaning strategies finally transform into decisive action, before the next Molotov flies.
President Donald Trump, you’ve taken dramatic steps on combating antisemitism on college campuses – now it’s time to strengthen the Jewish communities, while at the same time, suffocating antisemitism from its deep and infectious roots.
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