Police cordon off Pearl Street in Boulder, Colorado, following an incident that the FBI is investigating as an act of terror, June 1. Photo by Chet Strange/Getty Images
Contributing Columnist
Emily Tamkin
June 2, 2025
I have two fears after the Sunday attack in which eight people in Boulder, Colorado, were viciously burned by a man wielding Molotov cocktails at a rally for the release of Israeli hostages still in Gaza.
The first: That the people injured, including one Holocaust survivor, would not survive this. That their lives would end with this unbearable violence, being burned alive while rallying for the release of people kept in captivity.
And the second: That this latest instance of extreme violence against Jews will bring us deeper into a new cycle in which concerns of antisemitism are alternately dismissed and exploited.
The cycle works like this: Some act of antisemitism or violence against Jews is carried out. Some parties then use it as a pretense — perhaps out of genuine fear, or perhaps to pursue cynical pre-existing policy goals — to justify their own preferred policy positions.
On the right, they seek a crackdown on free speech, free assembly, criticism of Israel, immigrants, or universities. This crackdown, far from inspiring people to take antisemitism more seriously, further degrades the meaning of the word, conflating antisemitism with criticism of Israel. And in turn, some on the left then greet violent attacks on Jews in the United States by saying that they’re a comeuppance for Israel’s war in Gaza.
Already, on Sunday, I saw people online arguing that those injured in the Boulder attack somehow deserved it because of Israel’s war. Others lambasted Kat Abughazaleh, a Palestinian American candidate for Congress in Illinois, for daring to condemn the attack.
We’ve already seen this play out too many times since Oct. 7. Just a day before the Boulder attack, the governor of Illinois, JB Pritzker, who is Jewish, did not mention Israel or Zionism when he posted on social media about not staying silent in the face of rising antisemitism. He was met with a series of replies about how protesting Israeli injustices isn’t antisemitic.
American Jews have found themselves in the middle of a terrifyingly volatile ferment.
The definition is contested, and the data is too, but antisemitism remains high after spiking in the early months of the Israel-Hamas war. Rather than taking a holistic approach to combat it, President Donald Trump’s administration is weaponizing claims of antisemitism to enable its anti-democratic agenda — effectively turning Jews into scapegoats for fury over those efforts’ costs.
Those crackdowns do not appear to be leading people to take antisemitism more seriously. In fact, per a Brookings report from earlier this year, people instead increasingly see the label of “antisemitism” as a term used to delegitimize political opponents and critics of Israel — not one that refers to a real and present threat to Jews. A poll from last month suggests that most American Jews think that deporting people for pro-Palestinian speech increases antisemitism. I agree with them.
On top of that, evidence suggests that antisemitic attitudes increase with Israeli hostility toward Palestinians, and Israel’s war is ongoing; every day, we read headlines like “Young girl escapes burning Gaza school after Israeli attack.”
And the risk of copycat attacks — further acts of violence, inspired by those that have already taken place — feels alarmingly high. In just the last two months, we have seen an arson attack target Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro on the first night of Passover; a shooting that killed two Israeli Embassy staffers outside an event for young Jewish professionals at the Capital Jewish Museum; and now this firebomb attack in Boulder.
Amid all these forces — which have combined to make Jewish life in the U.S. feel increasingly precarious — is there a way out of this cycle?
If there is, it’s not the way currently being pursued by our public officials. The Trump administration has not done an admirable job in responding to these new threats.
After the Boulder attack, Trump posted on Truth Social, his social media platform, that it was the fault of former President Joe Biden’s open border policy; the suspect entered the country under Biden, but overstayed his visa under Trump. Putting the details aside: Will this do anything to disabuse people of the notion that “antisemitism” is a word thrown around at political opponents?
In a video address after the late May Capital Jewish Museum shooting, Secretary of State Marco Rubio conflated Israel and “the Jewish people” — a move that can encourage, rather than discourage, antisemitism. He also said that the words “free Palestine” were themselves inherently antisemitic, another escalation and conflation.
Both messages indicated that the administration intends to keep treating violence against Jews as an excuse to push xenophobic policies and go after legitimate political speech. While I wish our leaders would ask themselves if their approach will genuinely prompt people to take antisemitism more seriously, I suspect they will not.
I don’t know how to break this cycle. But I do strongly suspect that as a first step, American Jews — and Americans more generally — need to insist on our right to participate in civic life.
That can mean running to raise awareness of the plight of the many hostages still in Gaza. It can mean attending an event for Jewish professionals, or showing up at a pro-Palestine protest, or writing an op-ed. It should mean that we all have the right to go out into society and do so safely, returning to our loved ones at the end of the day, no matter what we believe.
Pushing back on those who would threaten that right must be our first step out of this spiral. And I worry that, if we do not take it, we will travel so far down that we cannot see our way out.
