“Our community is really suffering and scared,” Brandon Rattiner, senior director of Colorado’s Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC), told CBS after the Molotov cocktail attack on demonstrators at a rally for the release of hostages on Shavuot. “I’m hearing that [the community feels] isolated and vulnerable.”
Twelve people had burn wounds after Mohamed Sabry Soliman, an Egyptian citizen, threw incendiary devices at participants of the Run for Their Lives. It is one of 230 weekly events that take place around the world designed to honor the 58 hostages kidnapped by Hamas and held in captivity for more than 600 days.
The victims’ wounds range “from very serious to more minor,” Boulder Police Chief Stephen Redfearn said.
The JEWISHcolorado organization said it has partnered with the JCRC, Jco’s Secure Community Network, the Anti-Defamation League, the Israeli-American Council, Rocky Mountain Rabbis & Cantors, StandWithUs, and Stop Antisemitism Colorado to support the Boulder Jewish community. It said it would share the details later this week.JEWISHcolorado also said it would expedite safety and security funding to Jewish preschools with another round of grants in cooperation with the Tepper Foundation.
The JCRC and its 40 member organizations said: “It comes shortly after a Coloradan was arrested for plotting to firebomb a US embassy office in Israel, and after two young adults were murdered outside a Jewish event in Washington.
“We must look in the mirror and ask ourselves how our society allowed this to happen and keep happening.”The JCRC said it was not being alarmist by consistently warning about the repercussions of hateful rhetoric against Jews and Israelis.
“Violence against Jews is immoral and must end,” it said. “Colorado must be a place where every Jew feels safe, supported, and free to live their authentic Jewish lives.”
Preventing more attacks against American Jewry
Jewish Federations of North America president and CEO Eric D. Fingerhut said: “The attack in Boulder is another example of a wave of domestic terror attacks aimed at the Jewish community.”
He said the Trump administration should make this its highest priority and recommended concrete steps to take.First of all, Fingerhut said, Congress should increase Nonprofit Security Grant (NSGP) funding to $1 billion to “meet the urgent and growing need and demand.”
Second, the government should dedicate funding to meet the urgent need for additional security personnel at Jewish institutions, such as day schools and yeshivas, synagogues, Jewish early childhood centers, JCCs, and summer camps, he said.
Funding for local police and law enforcement should be increased, and aggressive prosecution for antisemitic hate crimes and extreme violence should be instituted to the full extent of the law, he added.
The US government should hold social media, gaming, messaging, and other online platforms accountable for “amplification of antisemitic hate, glorification of terrorism, extremism, disinformation, and incitement,” Fingerhut said.
Stefanie Clarke, the co-executive director of Stop Antisemitism Colorado, said: “We have been trying to sound the alarm for months and months, since October 7, and it’s time to put an end to this dangerous rhetoric, and it’s time for the Boulder community to come together with the Jewish people.”
One of the victims of the attack was a Holocaust survivor. Her friend Chany Scheiner, the wife of the rabbi at the Boulder County Center for Judaism, said: “The Boulder Jewish community has felt safe in Boulder.”
“Boulder is a beautiful place,” she told 9NEWS. “People are friendly, they’re kind, and this was out of left field. This is not something that we ever dreamed would be in our neighborhood or in our backyard, and it’s horrific, and we can’t wrap our head around it, because this is not Boulder.”
Nevertheless, on February 20, Rabbi Marc Soloway of Boulder wrote in an open letter to the City Council: “It is just a plain fact that many of us in Boulder’s Jewish community simply do not feel safe or supported.”
He said he could “no longer be silent as a leader in Boulder’s Jewish community for 20 years in light of the continuing developments.”
Soloway reported being “physically and verbally threatened by people screaming anti-Israel slogans in [his] face” during a Boulder City Council meeting. “There is an inability or an unwillingness to see any nuance from so many, including Council Member Taishya Adams, and there is no question that anti-Zionism has become a pernicious form of antisemitism.”
Umbrella Jewish groups have also vehemently condemned the attack. Jewish Agency chairman Doron Almog, chairman of the Board of Governors Mark Wilf, and CEO and Director-General Yehuda Setton said in a statement: “The Jewish Agency remains fully committed to strengthening our partners at JFNA, the Colorado Jewish community, and communities around the world... Please know that The Jewish Agency stands firmly with you, ready to support you in any way needed throughout the coming period, including through our dedicated shlichim [emissaries] on the ground.”
The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA) lambasted the media coverage of the attack. CAMERA CEO Kurt Schwartz, a former Massachusetts undersecretary for homeland security and undersecretary of law enforcement, said: “Some media outlets have downplayed or distorted the story, [which] makes the situation even more alarming.”
“When the media buries or sanitizes attacks like this, it contributes to the normalization of antisemitism,” he said. “This is a journalistic failure and, more troublingly, a moral one.”
Schwartz cited the omission of the identities of the victims in much media reporting, for example, CBS’s title, “Attack at Boulder’s Pearl Street Mall in Colorado burns several people,” and NPR’s headline, “Multiple people burned in attack on Boulder’s Pearl Street.”
CAMERA urged editors and reporters to “clearly state the facts, name antisemitism when it occurs, and treat these attacks with the urgency and gravity they demand.”
The Hostage and Missing Families Forum said it was “heartbroken by the tragic attack” and thanked the Run for Their Lives community for its support over the past 600 days.
“Today, we stand with you – with care, with solidarity, and with deep appreciation for your unwavering support,” it said. “The safety and well-being of our community remains our top priority, now and always.”