(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) The trend of left-wing extremists hijacking liberal institutions to push support for anti-Semitism and violence recently spilled into the political sphere with the election of communist and pro-Hamas candidates in California and New York.
But an ultra-liberal Colorado town may prove a cautionary tale for how it will end: with de-facto state-sanctioned terrorism.
At the University of Colorado, Boulder Students for Justice in Palestine, honored the “man who sacrificed his comfort and his proximity to empire, willingly expending his own liberty in attaining his objective." The man? Mohamed Sabry Soliman who burned to death a Jewish woman…
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) June 27, 2026
The University of Colorado Boulder recently condemned an unofficial campus group, Students for Justice in Palestine, for celebrating the one-year anniversary of a June 1 firebombing at Boulder’s Pearl Street pedestrian mall that killed an elderly Jewish woman.
“Glorification of violence is abhorrent and does not reflect the University of Colorado Boulder’s values,” it said in a strongly worded statement. “We denounce antisemitism and violence in all forms, and prohibit discrimination and harassment on the basis of protected class.”
Mohamed Sabry Soliman used Molotov cocktails and an improvised flamethrower to target a group of Jewish demonstrators, resulting in fatal injuries to 82-year-old Karen Sorin Diamond, who died 24 days later.
Soliman pled guilty to 101 charges, including 67 violent crimes, and was convicted last month. He is serving life in prison without possibility of parole, plus an extra 2,176 years for good measure, KGNU reported.
Shortly after his sentencing, the SJP group at UC Boulder released a statement of solidarity on its website that called for Soliman’s release, as well as advocating for the abolishment of ICE and urging fellow extremists to “continue the struggle” with additional acts of terrorism.
“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,” the SJP statement said.
“Mohamed chose the only sane response available to a rational human being confronted with the normalization of genocide,” it continued. “He refused the comfortable position of the grateful immigrant and the role of the obedient subject, choosing confrontation with a violent system over passive proximity to the comfort of empire.”
In addition to SJP’s insistence that the act was entirely rational, the statement lamented the injustice heaped upon Soliman with eight consecutive life sentences.
“We honor a man who sacrificed his comfort and his proximity to empire, willingly expending his own liberty in attaining his objective,” it said.
Finally, the group sought to invalidate the U.S. judicial system—or any other measure of accountability outside of the Muslim legal code.
“[T]he Palestinian Resistance stands as the sole legitimate authority capable of delivering accountability for the genocidal actions of the Zionist entity,” it said.
In addition to UC Boulder officials’ condemnation, Democrat District Attorney Michael Dougherty rebuked it with a sharply worded statement of his own, insisting that the verdict and sentencing were reasonable.
“I join in the many rational voices condemning their statement as heartless and vile,” Dougherty said. “Thankfully, the law does not justify or excuse a person setting other human beings on fire in an effort to kill them.”
Rep. Brittany Pettersen, D-Colo., also issued a sharply worded post via social media.
“This behavior is a disgrace and should be denounced by every Coloradan and American,” she wrote. “This is not who we are.”
I'm utterly horrified that a group of students in Boulder justified the deadly firebombing attack last year that targeted the Jewish community and encouraged others to follow the murderer's "act of resistance."
Anti-Semitic rhetoric like this continues to put the Jewish… https://t.co/agTnIVD4nX
— U.S. Rep. Brittany Pettersen (@RepPettersen) June 4, 2026
Despite the group’s apparent gripes with the justice system, SJP activists haven’t been shy about using the courts in the past for their own benefit.
In 2024, two of the group’s UC Boulder members, Max Inman and Mari Rosenfeld, were barred from campus events after disrupting a campus job fair.
The students sued, claiming that their First and 14th Amendment rights (free speech and due process) had been violated.
In March, U.S. District Judge Philip A. Brimmer, a George W. Bush appointee, partially dismissed the plaintiffs’ claims against the school, citing administrators’ qualified immunity, but kept open the possibility that some of the students’ claims may be brought again.
The case ultimately was rendered moot in May, when Holly Nelson, UC Boulder’s deputy dean of students overseeing student conduct and conflict resolution, determined that the students “did not materially and substantially disrupt the career fair.”
Ben Sellers is a freelance writer and former editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/realbensellers.
