This piece is part of Yellow Scene Magazine’s Opinion section. The views expressed here are those of the author in their role as Publisher, and do not represent a reported news position. At Yellow Scene, opinion pieces speak freely, challenge assumptions, and say the quiet parts out loud. 8/7/25 Updated to reflect that Ryan Schuchard and Nicole Speers’ op-ed was in response to a meme.

The June 1 firebombing on Pearl Street shocked the city. Mohamed Sabry Soliman hurled a makeshift Molotov cocktail into a crowd rallying for the release of Israeli hostages and POWs in Gaza. One person was killed; several others were hospitalized. In the immediate aftermath, Yellow Scene called it, “an act of horror that will take a long time to heal from.”

But in the weeks since, the tragedy has taken on a life of its own. It has become a political litmus test and a flashpoint for how Boulder speaks (or doesn’t) about Gaza, Zionism, and dissent. 

That tension recalls a moment from not so long ago. In the aftermath of September 11, national grief quickly hardened into dogma. Muslims were scapegoated. Civil liberties were stripped. The Bush administration launched wars in the name of security, killing hundreds of thousands. In Boulder, Boulder Weekly published Pamela White’s now-famous cover story, “Why Are We So Hated?” just two days after the attacks. It asked the question few dared to at the time: what motivates our enemies, and what do their grievances say about us?

In that piece, CU professor Ira Chernus cautioned against moral absolutism: “The general assumption is that if you listen to what they say, that endorses [the attack].” But listening, he argued, was essential to preventing future violence. Other voices have echoed the same sentiment. David Barsamian called terrorism “the poor man’s B-52,” highlighting the power imbalance between nations and those who resort to desperate, brutal tactics. Joel Edelstein added, “Americans would not sit quietly if they were treated like the Palestinians are treated by the Israelis,” pointing to the double standards in how suffering and resistance are framed depending on who experiences them.

The parallels in today’s discourse are hard to miss. After 9/11, anyone seen as “disloyal” or critical of U.S. policy was branded un-American, even treasonous. The Dixie Chicks were blacklisted. Journalists were sidelined. Protesters were smeared. Yellow Scene received hate mail and calls for speaking out against invading Iraq. Similarly, in Boulder today, the space to ask uncomfortable questions—about Gaza, about power, about complicity—is rapidly closing.

And just as post-9/11 narratives erased decades of U.S. interventionism to cast America as a blameless victim, today’s narrative risks painting over 74 years of occupation and apartheid that set the stage for October 7th.

Within hours of the Pearl Street attack, leaders across Colorado denounced it as an act of antisemitism. Governor Jared Polis issued a statement. A pledge was circulated among the members of the Boulder City Council. “It was important to stand with our Jewish community,” one council member said. Six members signed immediately.

One didn’t: Councilwoman Taishya Adams. Instead, she released her own statement mourning the tragedy while also addressing the broader political context, particularly with regards to Gaza.

Her refusal sparked outrage, and social media erupted. A petition to remove her from office began circulating. A few days later, councilmembers Mark Wallach and Matt Benjamin published an op-ed accusing Gaza solidarity activists of “abandoning all standards of decency” and engaging in “juvenile, performative politics.” The piece focused on a “Wanted” poster circulating online that criticized council members for refusing to pass a ceasefire resolution or divest city investments from weapons manufacturers.

Wallach and Benjamin claimed the poster implied council members were criminals: “Dead or alive?” they wrote. “This is on the very edge of incitement to violence… This antisemitic characterization of the Council, some members of which are Jewish, is abhorrent, and perhaps the most offensive thing that can be said to a person of the Jewish faith.”

The accusation feels disingenuous. Every council member who opposed a ceasefire resolution, Jewish or not, was included on the poster. The message was clear: refusing to act on Gaza has political consequences. To frame that criticism as antisemitic because some targeted officials are Jewish confuses identity with ideology and erases the fact that many Jews in Boulder are also calling for a ceasefire.

Adams made her position clear. “My decision to withhold my signature from the June 2 city statement did not reflect any lack of empathy or support for Jewish community members – or an attempt to somehow justify the horrific act committed by this individual. Whatever his motivation, violence and terror are NEVER the answer.”

She condemned the attack unequivocally. She met with Jewish constituents to offer support. But she also questioned the framing of the pledge, which she claimed ignored the attacker’s stated motives: both antisemitic and anti-Zionist. 

“If we are to prevent future violence and additional attacks in our community, I believe we need to be real about the possible motivations for this heinous act.” Adams continued, “Denying our community the full truth about the attack denies us the ability to fully protect ourselves and each other.”

That distinction matters. Not because it makes the attack less horrific, but because severing the attack from its political context ensures it will happen again. It is possible to mourn a violent act and still ask what produced it. It is possible to condemn antisemitism and still interrogate Zionism. But in Boulder, attempts to do both are being cast as heresy.

The backlash continued. A second opinion piece—this time from council members Nicole Speer and Ryan Schuchard—accused Adams of posting “antisemitic content” that “minimized and unnecessarily appropriated the Holocaust.” Their response was directed at a meme she shared about the genocide of Native Americans by the United States, which led to the Indigenous population dropping from an estimated 15 million to just 250,000 by 1900.

Yet her official statement made no mention of the Holocaust. Her focus was squarely on Gaza and city investments. The accusation underscores a deeper problem this moment has revealed: the collapse of any distinction between principled criticism of a government and hatred of an entire people. 

That’s the pattern now. Every attempt to analyze this tragedy in its full context, every mention of Gaza, apartheid, or U.S. complicity, is met with accusations of antisemitism. No matter how many disclaimers Adams includes, no matter how clearly she condemns the violence, the label sticks. It is a pervasive black and white way of thinking that justifies erasure.

 CU professor Nathan Schneider, who lost relatives in the Holocaust, called this narrowing of discourse “the unspeakable.” In a widely shared reflection on the Pearl Street attack, he wrote:

“The word antisemitism has shifted from a cry against genocide into a way to excuse it. … Locally, the explanation of antisemitism doesn’t compute. Another group of demonstrators—many of them Jewish, calling for a Gaza ceasefire—rallies downtown regularly. They weren’t attacked. Why one group and not the other?”

For Schneider, Adams’ refusal wasn’t a betrayal; it was, as he put it, “a raid on the unspeakable.” A rare moment of honesty. An acknowledgment that the firebombing on Pearl Street cannot be divorced from the firebombing of Gaza.

Yellow Scene warned of this. In the days after the firebombing, we wrote that grief would be weaponized to silence people. Since October 7th, accusations of antisemitism have become the bluntest tool to shut down criticism of Israeli policy. That national pattern is now playing out in Boulder.

None of this excuses violence. But it demands we ask: If the language of antisemitism becomes a shield for a state committing genocide, what happens to those trying to stop it? And what happens to a city that confuses condemning an attack with condemning a movement?

Adams’ refusal to sign the pledge drew swift backlash, but her posts made her reasoning clear: Boulder can’t claim to stand against hate while continuing to invest in corporations profiting from the siege on Gaza. Her critics are entitled to push back. But reducing her dissent to antisemitism sets a dangerous precedent.

That is the line Boulder is standing on now. Grief on one side. Fear on the other. And in between, a reckoning over whether this city will choose accountability or protection of power. 

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The post Boulder’s Breaking Point: Grief, Gaza, and the Language of Power appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

This piece is part of Yellow Scene Magazine’s Opinion section. The views expressed here are those of the author in their role as Associate Editor, and do not represent a reported news position. At Yellow Scene, opinion pieces speak freely, challenge assumptions, and say the quiet parts out loud.

A few days ago, the Boulder community experienced an act of horror that will take a long time to heal from. Mohamed Sabry Soliman threw a makeshift Molotov cocktail, setting people on fire, as bystanders watched in shock and disbelief. I was stunned when I first heard what had happened. While many in the city are grieving and searching for answers, others are responding in a more cynical manner. As national attention converges on Boulder County, some are wasting no time in using it to their advantage.

I’m not here to make sweeping claims about what should happen next, or how this could have been predicted or prevented. I’m not here to make assumptions about the suspect, his motives, or the victims. But I will say this: we must not let this tragedy, or the opportunists exploiting it, drag us away from our values and into hatred.

Firstly, Yellow Scene Magazine has been consistently clear in our stance: we condemn the genocide in Gaza. Our criticism of Israel does not make it difficult for us also to condemn lighting people on fire or to recognize this for what it is: a tragedy. Many victims remain hospitalized, some may not survive, and many more are traumatized and forever affected. The grief people are feeling is legitimate. What isn’t legitimate is the attempt to paint this act of violence as representative of broader political movements or ideologies.

 This was not the work of a radicalized twenty-something college student. Nor was it the act of a leftist radical fighting in the name of Marx. The alleged attacker is an Egyptian man in his 40s, who had reportedly been planning this act for over a year; his relationship to the war and its trauma likely looks nothing like that of the average American protester. Attempts to use this incident to demonize the left, to vilify those who’ve spoken up for Palestinians, or to tie this act to pro-Gaza advocacy are not just dishonest; They are calculated and opportunistic at best, and dangerously misleading at worst.

We know what pro-Palestinian advocacy in Boulder and Colorado looks like. We’ve covered it: art exhibits with kites carrying the last words of dead Palestinians killed; a peaceful protest against military contractors, press conferences in Denver where Palestinian community members elevated South Africa’s case, accusing Israel of genocide; a fast last week in protest of starvation in Gaza. The connection between this man and those actions is tenuous at best, and often manufactured by people with an agenda. I point to the many forms Palestinian advocacy has taken in Boulder and Colorado, not to claim there’s a single legitimate way to protest, but to reject the attempt to conflate principled dissent with indiscriminate violence.

Yes, this attack follows the embassy firebombing in D.C., and now some are calling it the start of a violent “pattern.” But what exactly is starting? This pattern of violence didn’t begin last week or the week before; it’s been there all along. It just wasn’t politically convenient to name it until now.

Just last month, Joseph Czuba, an Illinois man, was sentenced to 53 years for murdering a six-year-old Palestinian-American boy simply because he believed all Muslims should die. A few months ago, two people were shot in Miami because the perpetrator was “hunting Palestinians.” And that’s not even touching the violence faced by protestors, like the UCLA students who were brutalized by a masked mob and then shot with rubber bullets by police, or the relentless, daily violence in Gaza and the West Bank. Since breaking the ceasefire, Israel has killed hundreds of Palestinians. On March 18, 2025, the death toll hit 600 in a single 24-hour period. Four hundred of those were children.

This is not whataboutism. The other instances of violence I’ve mentioned don’t erase what happened in Boulder. They don’t minimize the pain, the horror, or the real human suffering. What they do call into question is the idea that violence is unique to the “left” or somehow inherent to those who support Palestinian liberation. They also expose a painful double standard: the violence inflicted on Gaza and those who advocate against the genocide treated very differently than violence committed against the Jewish community or, more precisely, supporters of Zionism 

Has antisemitism risen since October 7th and the discourse that followed? Undoubtedly. And we must take that rise seriously. In many ways, we have. Since the Boulder attack, we’ve seen dozens of think pieces, statements from the governor and president, and swift condemnation. There’s also been heightened scrutiny, and in some cases, outright crackdowns, on anyone who dares to say “Free Palestine.”

I find gratitude in the fact that the Jewish community is supported in moments of grief. What troubles me is how quickly that support is weaponized into suspicion, surveillance, and slander, painting the millions of Americans who’ve marched for Palestinian rights as terrorists or enemies of the state. And I think it’s worth asking: where was this urgency, this outrage, this reflex to protect, when it was Palestinians being bombed and brutalized? Where is it now, as Islamophobia quietly surges? This question feels especially sharp in Boulder, where the city council has passed a declaration condemning antisemitism, but not Islamophobia. These disparities make something clear: for many in power, this moment isn’t just about healing. It isn’t even solely about protecting Boulder’s Jewish community. It’s about who gets to be seen as deserving of protection and who doesn’t. It’s about whose grief moves institutions, and whose grief is ignored. In the end, it’s about power. 

Trump used the attack to blame immigrants and justify his authoritarian, hateful immigration policies. Never mind that most mass shootings in this country are carried out by white men, many of whom cite Trump in their manifestos. And now, unsurprisingly, the attacker’s family has been detained by ICE. All of this unfolds against the backdrop of an increasingly aggressive effort to suppress free speech on Palestine. The fact is, Trump and the GOP don’t see this as a tragedy, they see it as an opportunity. A way to seize power by stoking fear. A chance to turn grief into hatred, toward immigrants, toward protesters, toward speech, and toward each other.

Hilary Kalisman, an assistant professor of history and the endowed chair of Israel/Palestine Studies in the Program in Jewish Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, wrote in the wake of this moment: 

“I hope my community will never face an attack like this again. And I hope, too, that we will avoid becoming political pawns, for Israel’s government or for the current administration. The Middle East is still experiencing devastating violence; while it does, Jews and Palestinians here in the U.S. will both face unpredictable and complicated threats.

To help combat them, we must stop making assumptions of one another. Doing so means finding a space to listen — to do the nuanced work that moments like this can endanger, in our classrooms, our communities, and our country.” 

Her words say what I’ve tried to throughout this piece: we can hold grief without surrendering to fear. We can demand justice without becoming pawns. We can protect each other without collapsing into hate.

The post Don’t Let Grief Become A Weapon appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.