The Boulder Nightmare

Debra Saunders on Jun 3, 2025

WASHINGTON -- The nightmare stories aren't going away. The latest outrage is the firebombing of a group of activists who were participating in a peace march in Boulder, Colorado, Sunday to bring attention to the 58 hostages still remaining in Gaza.

"We have to end Zionists," said the illegal immigrant who has been charged in the attack that injured eight innocent protesters, including a Holocaust survivor. Two victims remain in the hospital, Boulder Police Chief Stephen Redfearn told reporters Monday.

This horrible story has two elements that keep popping up in the worst ways.

First, there is the sorry specter of antisemitism, which has gained some momentum on left-wing college campuses, where activists chant "From the River to the Sea" and "Free, free Palestine."

Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, who was charged with a federal hate crime offense Monday, allegedly repeated the "Free Palestine" mantra during the Sunday attack. "This will end when Palestine is free and for us," he also said.

A car registered to Soliman included paperwork with the words, "Israel," "Palestine" and "USAID," according to the federal criminal complaint.

When detaining Soliman, local law enforcement found 16 unlit Molotov cocktails. Thank you, Boulder police.

Jonathan Schanzer, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, blames the "demonization of pro-Israel people since the war began" in Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023. He noted that the "Run for Their Lives" peace marchers were hardly provocateurs.

It's not as if they were taking over buildings.

It's antisemitism, larger than it was before Oct. 7. "When people are fed a steady diet of this for 600 days-plus, the kinds of attacks we've seen lately become inevitable," Schanzer told me.

Issue No. 2: President Donald Trump sees this crime as the result of lax immigration enforcement under former President Joe Biden.

Soliman, a 45-year-old Egyptian citizen, originally entered the country through Los Angeles International Airport on Aug. 27, 2022, Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement sources told Fox News. He unsuccessfully tried to claim asylum that year.

The terror suspect had a tourist visa that expired in 2023. According to ABC News, he remained in the United States after a work permit expired on March 28, 2025.

The suspect told law enforcement that he had been planning the attack for a year. He was waiting for his daughter to graduate.

Trump posted on Truth Social that the suspect "came in through Biden's ridiculous Open Border Policy, which has hurt our Country so badly. He must go out under 'TRUMP' Policy."

Would Soliman have fared as well if Trump had won the 2020 election and remained in the White House instead of Biden?

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the pro-enforcement Center for Immigration Studies, believes Soliman's presence would have been "a lot less likely" under Trump.

For one thing, Krikorian offered, the Trump government is more likely to go after those who overstay their visas than Biden was. Also, for that reason, Soliman might have been less likely to have come to the United States in the first place.

There's no question that immigration enforcement is tighter under Trump than it was under Biden.

But the problem with antisemitism remains -- and that's something border enforcement can't fix.

Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on X.

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