The Boulder Firebomber Hunted Jews at a Hostage-Solidarity Walk — 'Anti-Zionism' Is His Alibi, Not His Politics

On June 1, 2025, a man walked onto Boulder’s Pearl Street. He carried a homemade flamethrower, 18 Molotov cocktails in a box, and a year of planning. He had disguised himself, and by his own later admission, he had searched for a “Zionist” target. He found one: the weekly walk of a group called Run for Their Lives. That group had met every week since Hamas started this war on October 7, 2023, to ask for the release of the hostages dragged into Gaza. He lit and threw two of the eighteen, shouting “Free Palestine.” In a note and a police interview he said he wanted to “kill all Zionist people.” A dozen people were burned, and a dog was burned. Karen Diamond, 82, died of her injuries on June 25, 2025.

The man is Mohamed Sabry Soliman, an Egyptian national who was in the United States illegally; his work authorization had lapsed. On May 7, 2026, he pleaded guilty to 101 state counts, and the court sentenced him to life without parole plus 2,128 years. Through an interpreter, he told the court, “Yes, I am against Israel and I can’t deny that. And that is my right.” He called Zionism the enemy and denied that any of it was antisemitism. On June 1, 2026, his federal hate-crime trial opened in Denver, and his defense there runs on a single claim: attacking “Zionists” is protected political speech, not a hate crime.

That claim is the firebomber’s alibi, and the conduct refutes it. This man hunted a “Zionist” target for a year. He disguised himself. He burned people who had gathered as Jews to plead for Jewish hostages. The chant does not launder that act into politics. It confesses the motive. Anti-Zionism that hunts Jewish bodies is antisemitism. The “anti-Zionism, not antisemitism” defense just faced its cleanest real-world test, and the verdict came back in burn scars and a grave.

What is actually contested — and what is not

Be precise about who is arguing what. The defense is counting on the blur.

No court has yet ruled that the Boulder attack was a federal hate crime. He already pleaded guilty in state court, but that does not close the federal case. State and federal courts punish separate crimes, so the hate-crime question is still live. That is the question the federal trial exists to decide; it opened June 1, 2026. The death penalty is on the table for one reason: Colorado abolished its own, so the federal counts carry the capital exposure.

At the probable-cause stage, U.S. Magistrate Judge Kathryn Starnella found only that the case could proceed. She acknowledged that “some of the evidence undercut the government’s allegation” while “other evidence supported it.” The evidence she meant is Soliman’s own line between Jews and “Zionists” — the note and the interview where he said he had no problem with the Jews he knew. We take that head-on further down. She left the deeper question for trial.

So when we say this attack was antisemitism, we are not reporting a jury verdict. We are stating MissingBridge’s own evidence-driven judgment. We mark that line so no reader mistakes it for a ruling.

The federal prosecution is not even arguing the case the way we are. Assistant U.S. Attorney (AUSA) Melissa Hindman has framed the government’s theory as national origin. She says Soliman targeted the marchers for their “perceived connection to Israel.” The government even quoted Soliman’s own statement that “not all Jewish people are Zionists.” It used his Jew-versus-Zionist line to build the national-origin theory: he went after the marchers for their tie to Israel.

That is the prosecution’s strategic choice under the federal hate-crime statute, and we will not put our argument in the government’s mouth.

And “this was not a hate crime” is the defense’s position. Soliman’s attorney, David Kraut, argues that opposition to Zionism is opposition to a political idea. On his view, “Zionists” are not a federally protected class. A man who searched online for a “Zionist” event and shouted anti-Zionist slogans was acting on politics, not bigotry.

That is the alibi this article exists to test. It is not a court’s finding. It is not the prosecution’s theory. It is the thing the defense needs the public to believe.

The ADL standard, applied to conduct

The alibi breaks on his conduct. What the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) adds is the reason that conduct is antisemitism, not politics.

The ADL is a research and civil-rights group, and it documents antisemitism for a living. That is exactly the question on the table. The day after the attack, it issued a statement about the word “Zionist.”

The word, it wrote, “has come to be used as a slur.” It now works as “a codeword for a Jewish or Israeli person (or anyone deemed supportive) often with dehumanizing comparisons or calls for harm.” Then comes the ADL’s conclusion. Because the overwhelming majority of Jews feel a connection to Israel, the ADL wrote, “attempts to disparage or target ‘Zionists’ are, in practice, targeting Jews.”

That is the standard. Now apply it to conduct, not rhetoric. The defense wants “Zionist” to be a political category, the way “tax policy” is — a set of ideas one may lawfully despise.

But Soliman did not picket an idea. He did not debate Theodor Herzl. He hunted human beings who had gathered, week after week, as Jews, to plead for Jewish hostages. Then he set them on fire.

The ADL’s point is simple: the word does the dehumanizing work that makes the bodies seem like fair game. Soliman’s box of Molotov cocktails is what that dehumanization looks like when it stops being a chant. The “Zionist” framing did not make his target political. It made his target readable to him as Jews — Jews he had given himself permission to burn.

”I had no problem with them”: the good-Jews exemption

The defense has one fact that sounds exculpatory, so meet it head-on. Soliman told the truth about parts of his own life. In a handwritten note and a post-arrest interview, he said he did not hate all Jews. He drove for Uber and had Jewish riders. He worked at a medical center owned by a Jewish family. He said he had no problem with any of them. His problem, he said, was with “Zionists” — with “anyone supporting the exist[ence] of Israel.”

Take that at full strength. He tolerated the Jews he knew. Does that clear him of antisemitism?

It does not. It is the oldest exemption in the record: the “good Jew” you spare, the “bad Jew” you burn. A man can be kind to his Jewish boss and still firebomb Jews he has labeled “Zionists.” Tolerating a few individuals you know is fully compatible with hunting the group. His own words draw the sorting line. Quiet Jews he does business with are fine. Jews who gather in public for Israel become “Zionists,” and “Zionists” he wanted to kill.

Notice what his methodology is, and use it against him. The alibi asks us to judge his motive by his rhetoric — “I don’t hate Jews.” The honest test judges it by his conduct. His conduct was to spend a year on a “Zionist” target, disguise himself, and set fire to a Jewish hostage vigil. That is not the record of a man who dislikes an idea. It is the record of a man who found a permitted word for the people he wanted to burn.

This is also why the prosecution’s choice proves nothing for him. Reading the same file, federal prosecutors built on national origin because it was the cleaner statutory path. His own “not all Jews are Zionists” line makes “perceived connection to Israel” the tidy charge. Choosing the easier statute is not a finding that the motive was clean. The sentencing judge, who read that same file, said it plainly from the bench: “You chose to victimize these people because they were members of the Jewish community.”

The certainty that needs no test — and the test it failed

Start with what Soliman’s own case gets put through. He searched a year for a “Zionist” target. He burned elderly Jews at a hostage vigil. And a ready answer was waiting before any evidence was weighed: he opposed Zionism, not Jews; the act was political; the category is fair.

That ready answer is the deeper structure under the alibi. It is the engine that lets a movement absorb an atrocity without flinching.

Some movements have decided, as doctrine, that “Zionists” are a fair enemy. When one of their slogans turns up at a crime scene, they feel no need to re-examine it. They hold the doctrine for its certainty, not its accuracy. Certainty like that is built so it can never be proven wrong.

Every fact that should force a second look gets folded back into the slogan instead of testing it. That includes the year of hunting a “Zionist” target, the disguise, and a gathering the sentencing judge found he attacked because its members were Jews.

That is the move this case exists to refuse. The honest standard is the reverse. A claim about motive has to survive contact with the conduct. And it has to say in advance what would prove it wrong.

The defense’s claim — “anti-Zionism, not antisemitism” — fails that test on its own terms. If the category were truly political, and not a proxy for Jews, the attacker would have needed a target that was not simply Jews assembled as Jews. He did not have one.

Here the defense will say the walk was picked for its politics. The marchers carried Israeli and American flags and photos of the hostages, so in theory a non-Jewish ally could have marched too. Grant it. It still does not save the alibi. “Run for Their Lives” is a Jewish-community vigil for Jewish hostages, and the sentencing judge found its members were attacked as Jews. Picking the “Zionist” gathering was picking Jews — that is the ADL’s whole point. A stray ally in the blast radius would not have made the aim any less antisemitic; it would have made him collateral to it.

He went looking for “Zionists.” What he found, and burned, were Jews walking, week after week, to plead for their kidnapped. The slogan was not a description of his politics. It was the permission slip for the antisemitism.

CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America), a pro-Israel media-watchdog group, documented the attack the day after it happened. It named the cost of letting the alibi stand. When CNN puts “peaceful” in scare quotes, it is not being neutral. When the BBC omits the attacker’s shouted words, it is not being neutral.

When outlets sanitize the target’s identity, they are not being neutral. They are doing the laundering the doctrine needs. They turn a hate crime into a vague “incident,” so the slogan can keep its innocence. The verbatim record exists for one reason: so the laundering can be reversed.

Methodology and the conditions that would force a revision

This is an investigation, and it carries its falsifier on its face. Our central claim is a judgment, not a court finding. We have kept the two apart throughout.

The verifiable record is the spine of dated, sourced facts above. The inference is our verdict: this conduct is antisemitism under the ADL’s own standard.

We would revise or retract the inference if any of these were established.

1. That Soliman’s target on June 1, 2025 was something other than people assembled as Jews to advocate for Jewish hostages — say, a generic political office or a non-Jewish venue.
2. That the “Zionist” search and the during-attack shouts were misattributed or fabricated in the record.
3. That a document overturns the dated facts of the plea, the sentence, or Karen Diamond’s death.

We would correct any factual detail on a showing it is wrong — the count of injured, the immigration timeline, a quotation.

We will not retract the verdict for either of two reasons. We will not retract it because the federal prosecution argues national origin rather than antisemitism. And we will not retract it because a court, applying the hate-crime statute’s protected-class rules, reaches the legal question differently than we reach the moral one. The prosecution’s theory and the court’s ruling are reported here as themselves, distinct from our judgment.

What we will not do is treat the slogan as an excuse. “I oppose Zionism, not Jews,” spoken over the burned bodies of Jews, is not a fact about the speaker’s tolerance. It is evidence of how the word works.

Where to check every claim

Start with the Anti-Defamation League’s June 2, 2025 statement. It sets out the standard we apply: “Zionist” as “a codeword for a Jewish or Israeli person,” and the conclusion that targeting “Zionists” is “in practice, targeting Jews.” CAMERA’s same-day statement documents both the attack and the media coverage that obscured it.

For the spine of fact:

• JNS and Deseret News both report the May 7, 2026 plea to 101 state counts and the life-plus-2,128-years sentence. They carry Chief District Judge Nancy Salomone’s words from the bench: “You chose to victimize these people because they were members of the Jewish community.”
• Boulder Reporting Lab carries the precise figures — two of 18 Molotov cocktails thrown, the dog injured not killed. It also has the verbatim sentencing line: “Yes, I am against Israel and I can’t deny that. And that is my right.”
• JTA confirms Karen Diamond’s death on June 25, 2025 and the murder upgrade.
• The Department of Justice’s June 2025 charging announcement is the original 12-count federal hate-crime framing.
• Colorado Public Radio reports the handwritten note and post-Miranda interview. Soliman said he had “no problems” with the Jewish Uber clients and Jewish employer he knew, while naming “Zionists” as the enemy. That is the exculpatory record we test in the body, not omit.

Some reporting does not archive cleanly, so we cite it in prose above, not in the source list. That covers the federal prosecution’s national-origin theory and the defense’s political-speech position. The court reporting at the time — CBS Colorado and the AP wire account of the probable-cause hearing — carries the load-bearing legal attributions. Those are AUSA Hindman’s “perceived connection to Israel,” the “not all Jewish people are Zionists” line, defense attorney David Kraut’s protected-class argument, and Magistrate Judge Starnella’s probable-cause deferral.

Read the ADL standard. Read the verbatim sentencing record. Then ask a simple question. Did a man who searched a year for “Zionists” to burn, and found only Jews at a hostage vigil, oppose an idea — or hunt a people?

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Say this plainly, because the alibi is portable. “I oppose Zionism, not Jews” is not a one-time courtroom strategy. It is a formula. An entire movement has used it to commit and excuse violence against Jews, while keeping its hands clean of the word “antisemitism.”

Watch what happens if the formula works in Boulder. A firebomber who killed an 82-year-old woman at a hostage vigil gets to recast himself as a political dissident. If it works there, it works everywhere — for everyone who has learned to say “Zionist” when they mean Jew.

The receipts are not in dispute. The year of planning is on the record. The disguise is on the record. The “Zionist” search is on the record.

The 18 Molotov cocktails, the two that were thrown, the dozen burned, the dog, and Karen Diamond’s grave are on the record. The slogan shouted over them is on the record. The ADL’s standard for what that slogan does is on the record. The only thing the alibi has ever had going for it is that decent people are too polite to call the chant what the conduct proves it to be.

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