BOULDER, Colo. — Three days after the murderous attack on Jews marching near the Pearl Mall downtown here June 1, over 1,500 people packed the auditorium and overflow spaces at the Jewish Community Center for an event titled “Coming Together, a Community Gathering,” with 1,000 more watching online. The event was organized to show solidarity with the Jewish community and the victims of the firebomb attack.
Run for Their Lives is a group that has hosted weekly walks in hundreds of cities worldwide since Hamas’ 2023 pogrom in Israel, carrying posters of people still held hostages in Gaza. The Boulder group was attacked by a man, later identified as Mohamed Sabry Soliman, who lit and threw Molotov cocktails at the marchers and shouted “Free Palestine.” He later told police he “wanted to kill all Zionist people.” Fifteen people were injured, three of whom had to be treated at the University of Colorado Health burn unit, where two are still hospitalized. One of those injured was a Holocaust survivor.
Avraham Kornfeld, one of the 30 who walked that day, told the gathering, “Sometimes on the walks we hear a lot of heckling, and sometimes, more often actually, we hear a lot of thumbs up and little claps, ‘yea, we’re with you guys.’ And that’s a beautiful thing, There’s a lot of support in the community.”
“We’ve become acquainted with the hostages, who they were, how they lived, and for many, how they died,” Rachelle Halpern, a regular participant in the walks, told the crowd. “We then learned that our presence, our weekly silent walks were appreciated by the hostages’ families. That it meant to them that they were not forgotten.” She said they started the walks in November 2023, in weather ranging from minus 11 to 105 F. The marchers have ranged from two dozen to over 100.
“Suddenly a crash, a ball of fire, flames exploded around my feet,” she said. “I managed to get out. Immediately I saw a woman engulfed in flames lying on the ground with her husband. People rushed to smother the flames. It was extremely difficult to do, they didn’t have anything with them to use. People started running from across the mall with bottles of water, later buckets of water.”
The most severely injured victim was someone who had joined the walk for the first time, Kornfeld said. He was leaving the walk when he heard a crash and turned to see people in flames. He saw the perpetrator still standing with two more Molotov cocktails in his hands, screaming at the crowd.
It was 10 minutes before police arrived. They arrested Sabry Soliman and found he had over a dozen more incendiary devices ready to use.
“We’re walking again this Sunday,” Kornfeld said.
Support growing
Rachel Amaru, who introduced Halpern and Kornfeld at the meeting, is a leader of Boulder Run for Their Lives. “The amount of support we have received is beyond incredible — from around the world, from hostages’ family members, from returned hostages, from the founder of the global Run For Their Lives organization,” she posted on their web page. “We will stand up to antisemitism.”
The Boulder group organized a special walk June 8, with a leaflet titled “We Said We Wouldn’t Stop Walking, This Week Boulder and Denver Will Walk Together.” It coincided with a yearly Jewish Festival held at the Pearl Street Mall.
Jared Polis, the governor of Colorado, who is from Boulder and is Jewish, spoke, as well as Israel Bachar, the consul general of Israel for the Pacific Southwest. Earlier in the day an interfaith speakout against the Jew-hating attack was held at the courthouse, featuring Polis; Aaron Brockett, Boulder’s mayor; Rev. Mary Kate Rejouis of St. Aidan’s Episcopal Church; Imam Nader Elmarhoumi of the Islamic Center of Boulder; and others. Marc Soloway, rabbi of the Bonai Shalom congregation where several of those injured attend services, spoke at both events.
Far-ranging discussion in Boulder
On June 5, this Militant correspondent spoke with Mimzy Tackney-Moen at the Pearl Street Mall, where flowers have been left. She said she had come from Denver, along with her grandson and his mother, who wanted to join her in a visit there. She is a retired clinical social worker and therapist.
“It just broke my heart,” she said. “I have friends that are practicing Jews, we’re Unitarian Universalists. If a child is killed in Gaza it doesn’t justify violence against the people who marched here.”
“Hamas bears the greatest responsibility for the violence in Gaza,” I said, “since they deliberately use civilians to hide behind. Their leaders have said they want a high death toll to increase international pressure on Israel to end the fighting. Israel is fighting a defensive war imposed on them by Hamas.”
Tackney-Moen noted there are protests against Hamas taking place in Gaza now. “This is an important development,” I said, “because the Palestinians in Gaza deserve to be out from under the thuggish rule of Hamas. It would give them a better chance at finding a way to move forward.”
Knocking on doors in Longmont, a working-class area nearby, fellow Socialist Workers Party member Joel Britton and I met Julia Lozano, who is active in a Christian church. She said the attack on Jews in Boulder was “horrific,” and it was lucky more people weren’t hurt or killed. “It’s sad when you can’t go out and not worry about an attack.”
I showed her the Militant. “It takes a stand in support of the right of Israel to exist, to be a refuge for Jews,” I said, noting we are seeing more attacks on Jews at the same time as the U.S. government is targeting immigrants. The capitalist rulers need scapegoats to take the blame as the crisis of their system deepens. She said she appreciated the Militant’s support for an amnesty for immigrant workers.
The Donald Trump administration has seized on the immigration status of Sabry Soliman — an Egyptian who authorities say is no longer in the country legally. They hope to shift the onus of the attack here onto “illegal” immigrants. But Soliman told police he targeted the group because they were Jews.
“I think working people like the grocery store and dairy workers who just voted to go on strike here are the people who can be allies in standing up against antisemitism,” Britton told Lozano. He explained he and I came to Colorado to show solidarity and to be better able to tell workers in California about these events upon our return.
Laura Garza is the Socialist Workers Party candidate for mayor of Los Angeles.