The attack in Boulder, Colorado.

I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

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Quick hits.

1. White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff reportedly presented a proposal to Iran that would curtail low-level uranium enrichment for a limited period of time. However, President Donald Trump later reiterated that he would not allow Iran to enrich uranium in any deal. (The report) Separately, Iran said it would reject the latest U.S. proposal, which an Iranian diplomat called a “non-starter.” (The rejection)
2. The Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to allow it to proceed with laying off thousands of federal workers while legal challenges to their firings play out. (The request) Separately, the Supreme Court declined to hear cases challenging separate state bans on AR-15-style rifles and high-capacity magazines. (The cases)
3. Poland elected Karol Nawrocki, a conservative historian, as its next president in a runoff against liberal candidate Rafal Trzaskowski, Warsaw's mayor. (The election) Separately, Lee Jae-myung, the former head of South Korea’s liberal Democratic Party, appears likely to become the country’s next president, with exit polling showing him defeating conservative candidate and former labor minister Kim Moon-soo. (The vote)
4. President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are reportedly planning to speak this week amid heightened tensions over trade. The Trump administration has claimed China is delaying its renewed exports of critical minerals to the U.S., and the Chinese government has criticized the U.S. for issuing a warning against using Chinese computer chips. (The tensions)
5. Job openings in the U.S. increased from an estimated 7.2 million in March to 7.39 million in April, exceeding economists’ expectations. (The numbers)

Today’s topic.

The attack in Boulder. In Boulder, Colorado on Sunday, a man attacked members of a Jewish community group advocating for the release of hostages in Gaza. The suspect, identified as Mohamed Sabry Soliman, reportedly used a makeshift flamethrower and threw incendiary devices into the crowd, injuring 12 people. Witnesses reported that the suspect shouted “Free Palestine!” during the attack, and police found over a dozen unlit Molotov cocktails in Soliman’s vicinity after his arrest. Soliman is now in custody facing hate crime, murder, and assault charges among others, and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Kash Patel said the incident is being investigated as a “targeted terror attack.”

Run for Their Lives, whose members were targeted in the attack, organizes weekly walks in communities across the world to raise awareness for hostages taken by Hamas during the October 7, 2023, attacks in Israel. A spokesperson for the organization said the local chapter had gathered in Boulder every week since the fall of 2023. Those injured in Sunday’s attack were between the ages of 52 and 88 and included an elderly Holocaust survivor. 

Soliman, the suspected attacker, is an Egyptian national who was in the United States illegally. He arrived in the U.S. in 2022 on a non-immigrant visa that permitted him to stay in the country through Feb. 2, 2023, but did not leave when his visa expired. He was granted a work authorization in March 2023, which ran through March 2025, but again remained in the country. Law enforcement officials said he had no previous significant contact with the police. According to an FBI affidavit, Soliman confessed to the attack after he was taken into custody and told police he would do it again, expressing a desire to kill “all Zionist people.” Soliman also said he deliberately targeted Run for Their Lives, which he described as a “Zionist group,” and planned the attack for over a year.

A witness reported that the suspect withdrew from the scene after the initial attack, then reemerged and threw a Molotov cocktail toward the crowd, appearing to catch himself on fire in the process. Law enforcement said they found papers with the words “Israel,” “Palestine,” and “USAID” written on them inside his car, but the FBI has not found evidence that Soliman was linked to a terrorist group or network. 

President Donald Trump linked former President Joe Biden’s immigration policies to the attack, writing on Truth Social, “[The suspect] came in through Biden’s ridiculous Open Border Policy, which has hurt our Country so badly… This is yet another example of why we must keep our Borders SECURE, and deport Illegal, Anti-American Radicals from our Homeland.” White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller also questioned why Soliman had been granted a work permit to remain in the country after overstaying his visa.

The attack follows two other high-profile violent incidents targeting Jewish and pro-Israel Americans in recent months. In April, a man set Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s (D) residence on fire while the governor and his family were sleeping inside; the suspect told law enforcement that he targeted Shapiro because of his stance on Palestine. Separately, on May 21, a man shot and killed two Israeli Embassy staffers outside an event at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., after which he shouted “Free, free Palestine!” while being taken into custody.

Today, we’ll break down what we know about the attack in Boulder, with views from the right and left, followed by my take.

Agreed.

• Both sides condemn the attack. 
• Writers on the right and left also link recent attacks on Jewish Americans to rising antisemitism worldwide.

What the right is saying.

• The right views the attack as a natural consequence of the antisemitism imbued in the anti-Israel movement. 
• Some say the attack also highlights the failures of Biden’s immigration policies.
• Others worry that more incidents like this are still to come.

In City Journal, Charles Fain Lehman wrote “this is what an intifada looks like.”

“Soliman’s assault is the third high-profile anti-Israel and anti-Semitic terror attack in the U.S. in recent months. It follows the double murder outside of the Washington, D.C. Jewish Museum less than ten days ago and the attempted firebombing of Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro’s home in April. The increasing tempo of violence makes the pattern hard to ignore: the American anti-Israel movement has radicalized,” Lehman said. “It is also hard not to draw a connection between the rhetoric used by radical protesters over the past two years and the recent wave of violence. ‘There is only one solution,’ students and marchers have chanted, ‘Intifada! Revolution!’ This — lighting humans on fire to advance your political goals — is what an Intifada looks like.”

“The issue isn’t just calls for Intifada. Claims that Israel is committing ‘genocide,’ demands for a Palestine ‘from the River to the Sea,’ and the routine vilification of ‘Zionists’ — a label invariably applied to Jews — all function to legitimize terrorism. This is not to suggest that protesters’ speech should be silenced, no matter how offensive. Nor does it mean that anyone who criticizes Israel’s conduct in Gaza is tacitly condoning terror,” Lehman wrote. “The point, rather, is that the American radical anti-Israel movement has built the intellectual scaffolding for—and in many cases all but invited—the violence now playing out in places like Boulder.”

In The New York Post, Andrew Arthur argued “Colorado attack shows why ICE can’t just focus on ‘criminals.’”

“Mohamed Sabry Soliman — an Egyptian national admitted under the Biden administration who overstayed a tourist visa — was named as a suspect in a heinous anti-Semitic attack in Boulder, Colo. His arrest shows why ‘border czar’ Tom Homan can’t just focus on criminal illegal aliens,” Arthur said. “According to the Migration Policy Institute, there were 132.4 million admissions of foreign nationals as nonimmigrants in FY 2023… Most, but not all, went back home as they were supposed to. A US Customs and Border Protection report estimates that among the nonimmigrants who came through airports and seaports and who were expected to depart in FY 2023, 1.45%, or 565,155 in total, didn’t go home like they should have.”

“President Donald Trump has tasked Homan with overseeing a ‘mass deportation’ program to drive down the illegal population in the United States. Thus far, that plan has largely focused on aliens with criminal arrests or convictions… But immigration laws require the removal of all aliens here illegally, not just the least sympathetic,” Arthur wrote. “Soliman is presumed innocent until proven guilty, but if he’s responsible for this attack, his actions harken back to another Egyptian overstay, Hesham Hedayet, who murdered two and wounded three others during a July 4, 2002, attack at the El Al counter at Los Angeles International Airport.”

In The Free Press, Jeffrey Herf explored “‘free Palestine’ terrorism.”

“This incident, which the FBI has called a ‘targeted terror attack,’ comes less than two weeks after the assassination of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim outside the Capital Jewish Museum. Their alleged killer, Elias Rodriguez, yelled exactly what the perpetrator in Boulder yelled— ‘Free Palestine’ — the slogan that echoed on campuses and in the streets, especially since the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023,” Herf said. “They are terrorist attacks carried out against Jews in America in the name of ‘liberation’ thousands of miles away. They were carried out by people who feel so emboldened by the global ideological assault on Israel and its supporters that they were willing to make the leap from hatred to violence. And if history is a guide, they will not be the last to do so.”

“In the United States, only a small minority of activists are likely to take that last step from ideology to political murder. Only a small number, one hopes, will believe that violence against Jews and Israel’s supporters is necessary and desirable in order to ‘free Palestine,’” Herf wrote. “But today those who are prone to make that leap will gain momentum from an ideological climate that is even more conducive to terror… It is the denunciation of Israel, not the denunciation of terrorism, which finds the most and the loudest expression in the universities and in other environments dominated by the pedigreed and the prestigious.”

What the left is saying.

• The left is disturbed by the attack, but many push back on attempts to link the incident to immigration issues.
• Some argue that both sides bear responsibility for rising antisemitism in the U.S.
• Others say the attacks in Boulder and D.C. highlight the ongoing threats to Jews. 

The Washington Post editorial board wrote “antisemitism does not respect national borders.”

“It’s true that Soliman should not have been in the United States. The Department of Homeland Security said on Monday that he is in the country illegally,” the board said. “Crimes committed by those in the country illegally should not have happened. Even advocates of high levels of immigration must admit that the United States should know who is entering the United States, along with any threats they pose. Yet most immigrants come to this country for refuge and work. Those who commit crimes discredit the vast majority, legal or not.”

“More to the point, somehow stopping all illegal immigration would not end antisemitism in America. Virulent and violent antisemitism transcends national boundaries. The cold-blooded murders of two Israeli Embassy staffers outside the Capital Jewish Museum last month underscored the homegrown element of the threat,” the board wrote. “All American Jews are victims of such antisemitic terrorism, which aims to paralyze the diaspora with fear. There is no easy solution. Minds can take decades to change. Politicians who encourage and exploit divisions over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict do not help.”

In Forward Magazine, Emily Tamkin shared “the two things I fear most after the horrifying attack on Jews in Boulder.”

“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,” Tamkin said. “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,” Tamkin wrote. “The risk of copycat attacks — further acts of violence, inspired by those that have already taken place — feels alarmingly high.”

In The Atlantic, Juliette Kayyem said “sheer hate” was behind the recent attacks on Jewish Americans.

“The anti-Semitic motivation of these attacks is clear. Such homicidal hate crimes have no justification; indeed, their collateral damage is to destroy the space for any reasonable debate about how Israel has conducted its war in Gaza. The two attacks are linked not only by their motivation, but by their horrific, performative intimacy,” Kayyem wrote. “Terrorism typically wields the threat of random violence, the notion that any innocent might be caught in its vortex of cruelty. These attacks are different because they were directed very specifically at people the attacker took to be Jewish. Their intimacy was precisely intended to inflict horror on a particular community and imply that no Jew could be innocent.”

“Pervasive anti-Semitism is what enables attackers to believe that they are striking back at Israel by trying to kill any Jew, anywhere. This hateful mindset assigns responsibility for specific Israeli policies to Jewish people all over the world. Jews thus stand condemned purely for being Jewish,” Kayyem said. “The Colorado victims were meeting in support of hostages taken by Hamas. The D.C. victims were working to advance their embassy’s diplomatic mission. Both sets of people belonged to the best traditions of dialogue and peaceful advocacy, the absolute opposite of irrational hate.”

My take.

Reminder: “My take” is a section where I give myself space to share my own personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism or compliments, don't unsubscribe. Write in by replying to this email, or leave a comment.

• Actions like this are why I said on Friday that “leaving Zionism” doesn’t mean “joining the other side.”
• I understand how Israel’s actions motivate these attacks, but they certainly don’t justify them.
• Violence is cyclical, and just like Israel’s violence creates more terrorism excusers, antisemitic violence creates more war-crime excusers.

In my Friday piece about my struggles with Zionism, I dedicated a whole section to saying that my unease with the label didn’t mean I was joining the “other team.” That is, I wasn’t pronouncing myself as anti-Zionist or anti-Israel, or going to stand shoulder to shoulder with activists on “the other side.” 

I wrote this for a few reasons: 1) Loud sectors of that side in the United States casually justify violence against Jews and Zionists. 2) I don’t believe that many anti-Zionists genuinely engage with the issues in Palestinian or Gazan society that need to be addressed for peace to prevail. And 3) Over and over again, I’ve found many pro-Palestinians assume the worst of pro-Israelis rather than engaging with the strong arguments that exist for their cause.

I was reflecting on this section after two Israeli embassy workers were assassinated by an anti-Zionist in Washington D.C., as I watched a stream of activist groups not just downplay the killings but celebrate them. Then the news out of Boulder, Colorado, broke: A man screaming “Free Palestine” and “Fuck the Zionists” had used a makeshift flamethrower to light a bunch of elderly Jews on fire who were peacefully protesting for the release of the remaining hostages in Gaza. Well, that’s kind of how the news broke. Some outlets, like NBC, did a good job obscuring this reality with headlines like “Multiple Gaza-hostage-awareness marchers injured in attack in Boulder.” Personally, my headline would have been “Man screaming ‘Free Palestine’ lights members of Jewish community group on fire with flamethrower.” 

These incidents are starting to become a pattern. In a matter of weeks, an anti-Zionist committed arson at the Jewish Pennsylvania governor’s mansion, an anti-Zionist killed two Jewish Israeli embassy workers, and an anti-Zionist lit a group of Jewish people peacefully protesting for the release of hostages on fire. To be clear, these are just the most violent, headline-grabbing, and high-profile incidents — they say nothing of the day-to-day interactions Jews and Israelis are reporting here in the U.S. 

One might imagine how the corporate press would cover these incidents if the pattern were right-wing extremists committing acts of violence against some kind of liberal-coded special-interest group. Other dynamics about this story are important — like the fact the suspect in custody was in the U.S. illegally and what that says about our broken immigration system — but given my writing last week, I want to focus mostly on the dynamics related to Israel and the pro-Palestine movement. 

When I and other Jews were expressing concern about chants to “globalize the intifada,” this is what we were concerned about. This is the nightmare, realized.

And the response has been more than disheartening. After the killing of the Israeli embassy workers, Jake Sherman, a prominent reporter at Punchbowl News who very rarely expresses any personal opinions publicly, tweeted about how “scary being an American Jew” is right now, with synagogues armed and fortified, kids going to schools layered with security, and campuses and cities rife with antisemitism. He retweeted that post again after the Boulder news broke. Here is a sample of the top replies:

• “Because the most important thing during a historically sadistic genocide of mostly children is the feelings of the people supporting it.”
• “Now just use a little bit of imagination to think of what ‘scary’ must be like for Palestinians…wait…you don’t need to imagine because the genocide, bombing of hospitals, schools etc & atrocities are live-streamed to our devices everyday.”
• “Jake these weren’t American Jews, they were staff members for the Israeli embassy, a country currently committing a genocide.”
• “it's blowback from the Israeli Occupation and Genocide, Jake. you slaughter people indiscriminately and you'll have to protect yourself from their anger. this isn't ideological - it's just material analysis”
• “Free Palestine and it all ends. It’s that simple.”

I also posted something on X about frightening acceleration in violence here in the U.S., and the first response I saw was, “It's almost like it's related to the increased barbarism by Israel on the people of Gaza.”

To be clear, these are not cherry-picked responses; they are the top comments, and they’re representative of the whole. Suffice it to say, I find the implication that attacking Jews or Israelis in the U.S. is an appropriate response to barbarism by the Israeli government to be completely and utterly deranged.

To state the obvious: You can empathize with what it’s like to be a Jew in America right now while also empathizing with what it’s like to be a Palestinian in Gaza right now without comparing or equating their plights; I would never categorize my suffering or fear as akin to anything any Gazan is experiencing in a war zone. 

From the other direction, Zionist or pro-Israel readers have told me that my writing is partially responsible for this violence; that criticizing Israel’s actions or categorizing them as an ethnic cleansing or genocide authorizes, and makes me responsible for, violence against Jews. It was a very disappointing reaction to Friday’s piece, but sadly one that I expected. I suppose the implication here is that earnestly trying to describe the abhorrent actions of a government permits others to respond violently to those actions. 

Ironically, this argument accepts the same fallacy from the other side that justifies violence against Jews by citing Israel’s actions in Gaza. It’s an entirely circular blame game that centralizes the observers as main characters and completely takes agency away from bad actors actually doing the thing. So, to be clear: My responsibility is to report things that are true, or to share my opinions honestly and fairly; how people choose to react to that is not my responsibility. 

For instance, a false claim circulated in mainstream news outlets yesterday about Israeli forces committing a massacre near an aid-distribution site in southern Gaza. The claim was investigated and debunked, but had already spread like wildfire before the truth came out. If we had inaccurately reported such a story, that’s something to hold me to account for. Just as American Jews aren’t responsible for atrocities committed by the Israeli military, I am not responsible for anti-Zionist activists committing violence against American Jews.

Obviously, I can see that these things are related. I know that extreme rhetoric from the pro-Palestine side is going to incite violence in the U.S.; that’s exactly why I expressed concern about college campus protesters calling to globalize the “intifada,” a word that is not associated with peaceful demonstrations. I also know that Israel’s actions in Gaza put more Jews in danger globally; I’ve written repeatedly about how Israel’s response to October 7 has made both Israelis and Jews all over the world less safe, which is born out by incidents like this accelerating in frequency. 

But understanding how these things are related is not the same as accepting these actions as justifiable. I don’t blame heated rhetoric for the actions of a deranged man with a flamethrower; I blame the man with the flamethrower. I don’t blame the Israeli government for the murder of two Israeli embassy workers; I blame the murderer. It’s one thing to insist on turning the temperature down for the cause of mitigating the tension and violence, but it’s another thing to blame people for things they are not responsible for. 

And not for nothing, but if you want to understand why so many Jews believe so deeply in the project of Israel — look around. This is it. Literally. One Israeli writer whom I greatly respect wrote to me privately about my piece on Friday and said something that struck a chord: There have always been anti-Zionist Jews. They are the safe Jews. Indeed, anti-Zionism is a good signal of the safety and goodness of a particular moment in history for the Jews, while Zionism is a product of the repeated collapse of that safety and morality.

In other words, one positively assured way to produce more Zionism, more belief in the necessity of Israel, and more belief in the cause is to make a place like the United States less safe for Jews. This truly dark twist of irony seems to be something pro-Palestine radicals don’t understand — from the campus protesters to the violent actors. Much the same way every bomb Israel drops in Gaza will create new anti-Israel radicals hellbent on destroying Israel for the rest of their lives, every anti-Israel march in the U.S. that bleeds into antisemitism, or every random attack on a Jew, or every act of vandalism of a synagogue, will breed more justification of extreme Israeli actions to ensure a Jewish homeland persists.

Truly grasping this reality is scary — watching the ways the worst actions of these groups feed and motivate each other, seeing their relationship worsen in real time as it has in fits and spurts throughout history, and knowing how hard it is to stop the cycle. But that’s where we are, and I don’t know where we will go next. I believe Israel is committed to a path of ethnically cleansing the Gaza strip; the anti-Israel activists are committed to making Israel and its supporters and any tangentially related Jew pay the price; and the more those Jews, Israelis or Zionists feel threatened, the more those Jews, Israelis, and Zionists are going to believe in the necessity of a Jewish state. And around we go.

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Under the radar.

The Justice Department is reportedly investigating the pardons issued by former President Joe Biden during the final days of his term. According to an internal email viewed by Reuters, Ed Martin, the Justice Department's pardon attorney, is assessing whether Biden “was competent and whether others were taking advantage of him through use of AutoPen or other means.” The investigation will focus on preemptive pardons for members of Biden’s family and clemency for 37 death-row prisoners issued shortly before President Trump’s inauguration. Trump and his supporters have claimed that Biden did not authorize the pardons, which the former president’s aides denied. Reuters has the story.

Numbers.

• 52–88. The age range of the victims in the Boulder attack on June 1.
• 16. The number of terrorist plots or attacks targeting Jews, Zionists or Jewish institutions in the United States since January 2020, according to the Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism.
• 9. The number of those incidents that occurred between July 2024 and June 2025.
• 96.8 million. The number of nonimmigrant admissions (allowing foreign nationals into the United States for non-immigration purposes) in fiscal year 2022, the year suspected attacker Mohamed Soliman entered the country, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
• 853,955. The estimated number of “overstay events” — when a nonimmigrant lawfully admitted to the United States remains in the country beyond the authorized period of admission — in FY 2022, according to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection report.
• 3.67%. The estimated overstay rate for nonimmigrant visitors who did not depart the United States on time and in accordance with the terms of their admission in FY 2022.
• 7.94%. The estimated overstay rate for nonimmigrants from Egypt (Soliman’s country of origin) admitted to the U.S. for business or pleasure in FY 2022. 

The extras.

• One year ago today we wrote about the new U.S. weapons policy in Ukraine.
• The most clicked link in yesterday’s newsletter was Isaac’s Friday edition on Zionism.
• Nothing to do with politics: The folks at Wired bought a “‘peeing’ robot attack dog from Temu.”
• Yesterday’s survey: 2,636 readers answered our survey on Trump’s tariffs with 70% saying they are not constitutional under any reasoning. “No one man should have the power to create economic chaos through a signature,” one respondent said.

Have a nice day.

A 322-pound loggerhead turtle named Lenny was found struggling to swim after being attacked by a shark. An underwater photographer spotted the injured turtle, brought him to the surface, and boated him to shore where Lenny took a “turtle ambulance” to a nonprofit turtle hospital in Marathon, Florida. Loggerhead turtles are an endangered species, with only one in 1,000 hatchlings reaching adulthood, meaning Lenny’s survival is crucial for his species — and survive he did. On March 25, Lenny was released, healed and healthy, back to the reef where he had been found. NBC News has the story.

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