DENVER — The first anniversary of the deadly antisemitic firebombing in Boulder, Colorado, featured a community observance to honor the victims — and a chilling reminder that not everyone believes violence against Jews is a bad thing.
The 30th Annual Boulder Jewish Festival began Sunday with a commemoration ceremony featuring religious and community leaders that included a candle-lighting for Karen Diamond, who died from her injuries a month after the attack at age 82.
“The only way to respond to such hate and darkness is with love and light, and that’s the message that she left for and with us,” Congregation Bonai Shalom Rabbi Marc Soloway told the crowd at the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder.
The remembrance came days after the community was rocked by another type of assault on the Jewish community.
Boulder Students for Justice in Palestine sparked an uproar by commending the attack’s perpetrator, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, who used a makeshift flamethrower on participants in a weekly solidarity walk in support of the Hamas-held hostages in Gaza.
The anti-Israel group cheered Soliman, who was sentenced last month to life in prison, for “striking against the colonist procession that gathers weekly to celebrate the pretext for ongoing genocide.”
“Today, Boulder Students for Justice in Palestine publishes this statement in support of Mohamed’s decisive act of resistance against a genocidal global order — an act that was, in the words of Ward Churchill and Malcolm X, merely a case of chickens coming home to roost,” the June 1 Instagram post reads.
The group said, “Mohamed chose the only sane response available to a rational human being confronted with the normalization of genocide.”
The blowback was swift. Campus leaders and elected officials denounced the Instagram post, which has since been deleted, while the university emphasized that the SJP affiliate “does not speak for CU Boulder and is not a recognized student organization.”
The university also launched a review into the pro-Palestinian group, which lost its recognition in 2024 after a series of disruptive protests spurred by the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas massacre of Israeli civilians.
“Glorification of violence is abhorrent and does not reflect the University of Colorado Boulder’s values,” the university said in its June 2 statement. “We denounce antisemitism and violence in all forms, and prohibit discrimination and harassment on the basis of protected class. The post has been reported to the appropriate campus offices for further review.”
The Anti-Defamation League said the “content of the post is beyond reprehensible. It is so detached from basic facts, human decency and reality that it would be difficult to take seriously if its message were not so dangerous.”
Soliman, a 46-year-old Egyptian national, received life in prison without the possibility of parole after pleading guilty to all 101 state charges against him, including first-degree murder.
Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty ripped the Boulder SJP post as “heartless and vile.”
“The firebomber killed an 82-year-old woman, seriously harmed 28 other victims and terrorized an entire community,” said Mr. Dougherty in a statement. “The people he chose to attack were completely innocent and had done nothing wrong.”
He added that the “sentence we secured was justice for such an inexcusable, unjustified act of terror and hate against members of our Jewish community.”
For the second year in a row, the Boulder Jewish Festival drew a heavy police presence, including officers on nearby rooftops. Even so, speakers sought to emphasize the positive.
“We are here because Jewish life is not defined by those who hate us,” Rabbi Charna Rosenholtz told the crowd. “It is defined by Torah, by memory, and by the goodwill and resilience that bring us back to one another.”
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