By Bruce S. Ticker in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The contempt that some Israel-bashers hold for America’s laws never ceases to surprise. Their accomplices in Boulder, Colorado, eclipsed them all on June 1, the first anniversary of Karen Diamond’s murder in a firebombing on Boulder’s Pearl Street.
They are demanding the release of her convicted killer, Mohamed Soliman, who was sentenced to life plus 2,178 years in prison last month after pleading guilty to 101 charges in the attack. He injured 13 others.
Soliman drove 100 miles from Colorado Springs to Pearl Street where he originally planned the attack as a mass shooting, but he ended up throwing multiple Molotov cocktails at the Boulder chapter members of Run for Their Lives, according to The Boulder Daily Camera. The chapter hosted weekly walks to march in solidarity with Israeli hostages each week before they were released. An affidavit states that he regarded the weekly walks as a chance to avenge his belief that they did not care about Arab hostages and supported Arab deaths.
Writing on a page on its website on the incident’s first anniversary, Boulder Students for Justice in Palestine said it honors the “man who sacrificed his comfort and his proximity to empire, willingly expending his own liberty in attaining his objective. The state would have us believe that Mohamed took the action he did because he is insane – a fanatic, a terrorist, guilty of a hate crime – but we know the truth and we reject the state’s inversion of it. Mohamed chose the only sane response available to a rational human being confronted with the normalization of genocide.”
Genocide, as in slaughtering 1,200 Israelis in southern Israel? Holding 250 hostages who are tortured and sexually abused? Some Israelis died in captivity.
Even if Israel went too far in carrying out retaliation in Gaza, what did that have to do with the Run for Their Lives participants? All the 82-year-old Ms. Diamond and her partners did was seek the release of their fellow Jews. To sound a tad naïve, what is wrong with that?
By the standards of Israel-bashers, Jews in America and elsewhere should firebomb pro-Arab activists whenever they demonstrate against Israel.
Most supporters of Israel do not resort to violence for a reason that eludes those who defame Israel. Violence is illegal. Most of us, with occasional exceptions, respect our nation’s laws and conduct ourselves in a dignified matter when confronting anti-Israel activists.
Not only do some pro-Arab activists employ violence, but their allies support what they do – to the point that they will demand Soliman’s release.
It is curious that those who clamor for Soliman’s release do not join him in these pursuits. After all, Soliman “chose the only sane response available.”
Have you guessed it yet? They are cowards. They are not going to disrupt their lives by harming their presumed enemies, even if they believe in it.
The University of Colorado Boulder ceased to recognize Students for Justice in Palestine in 2024 because of policy violations.
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Bruce S. Ticker is a Philadelphia-based columnist