Anti-semitic attack in Boulder

Details are still emerging, but this took place in the middle of an open-air pedestrian mall that is always crowded with people, including a lot of kids, on a summer Sunday afternoon:

Six people were hospitalized with “burns and other injuries” sustained in downtown Boulder, Colo., on Sunday afternoon, authorities said, after an attack on a group raising awareness about Israeli hostages being held in Gaza. The victims ranged in age from 67 to 88 and their injuries were anywhere from serious to minor, authorities said. Two were airlifted to a burn unit at a hospital in the Denver area, officials said.

The suspect was identified as Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, by Mark Michalek, the F.B.I. special agent in charge of the agency’s Denver field office. He said that witnesses reported that the suspect had used a “makeshift flamethrower” and thrown an incendiary device into the crowd, adding that “the suspect was heard to yell, ‘Free Palestine’ during the attack.”

I’ve come to know several people in Boulder’s Jewish community well over the years, and I’ve spent many a Sunday afternoon with my own children passing by that exact spot, so this is not an abstract sort of event for me. I can only hope the injuries suffered by the victims aren’t too serious.

Any argument about the potential moral quandaries raised by non-state actor violence in opposition to state violence is irrelevant in this kind of situation, where it’s impossible to imagine how this kind of thing could be anything but terrible for Palestinians in general and Palestinian-Americans in particular.

This would be true under any circumstances, but with Donald Trump in the White House and Kash Patel at the head of the FBI it’s especially catastrophic.