The attack on demonstrators in Boulder, Colo., marching in support of Israeli hostages would have been disturbing to Jewish people across the country even if it was the only such event of its kind. The suspect told investigators after his arrest that he had been planning the attack for a year, according to court documents. Eight people were hospitalized.
For many, the connections to other recent outbursts of violence were impossible to miss. The attack in Boulder came less than two weeks after two Israeli Embassy employees were shot and killed as they left a reception at a Jewish museum in Washington. A month earlier, an arsonist set fire to the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion on the first night of Passover while Gov. Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish, slept upstairs with his family.
“What we’ve seen these last few months is a shocking pattern of anti-Israel sentiment manifesting itself in antisemitic violence,” said Halie Soifer, chief executive of the Jewish Democratic Council of America. “With each incident there’s a further shattering of our sense of security.”
In Colorado and Washington, authorities said, the suspects shouted “Free Palestine” on the scene. In Pennsylvania, the arsonist later said he set the fire as a response to Israeli attacks on Palestinians.
Ms. Soifer pointed out that the Molotov cocktails used by the attacker in Boulder were strikingly similar to the incendiary devices used by Cody Balmer, the accused arsonist in Pennsylvania.
The man charged on Monday with a federal hate crime in Colorado, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, told investigators that he wanted to “kill all Zionist people and wished they were all dead,” according to papers filed in federal court.
The drumbeat of violence, erupting across the country and taking an unpredictable variety of forms, has deepened anxieties among many American Jews, contributing to a sense that simply existing in public as a Jewish person is increasingly dangerous. Victims of the attack at a weekly march in Boulder included a Holocaust survivor, according to a friend of the victim who was at the scene.
That all three attackers alluded to political objections to Israel raised concerns among many of the threat of left-wing political violence connected to the war in Gaza.
The number of antisemitic episodes in the United States was the highest ever recorded in a one-year period in the wake of the Hamas attack on Israel in 2023, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
“Dangerous words turn into dangerous actions,” said Stefanie Clarke, the co-executive director of Stop Antisemitism Colorado, which she founded in the wake of the attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. “We’ve been sounding the alarm about the rise in antisemitism, the dangerous rhetoric and the risks of this turning violent, and now we’re seeing it play out.”
Across the country, many Jews say they have observed an uptick in antisemitism, both personally and in the broader culture, in recent years.
In a survey of 1,732 Jews conducted in the fall of 2024, the American Jewish Committee found that 93 percent said antisemitism was at least somewhat of a problem, and a similar share said it had increased over the last five years. Almost a quarter said they had been the target of at least one antisemitic remark in the past year, and two percent said they had been physically attacked.
Ruth Graham is a national reporter, based in Dallas, covering religion, faith and values for The Times.
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