Students Hail Killer — Regents Push Back

Students relaxing on a campus quad in front of a brick academic building — Photo: Leigh Trail / Shutterstock

A radical student group at the University of Colorado Boulder openly praised a convicted firebomber who burned an elderly Jewish woman to death, calling his attack “the only sane response” to what they claim is genocide.

Story Snapshot

A Boulder Students for Justice in Palestine group glorified a deadly firebombing of a Jewish rally and demanded the killer’s release.
The group’s now-deleted statement called the attack “direct action against the Zionist death cult” and “the only sane response.”
University leaders condemned the post as glorifying violence and antisemitism, and confirmed the group is not in good standing.
The case fits a wider pattern of campus radicals treating violence against civilians as “resistance,” raising alarms for parents and taxpayers.

Radical campus group praises a deadly firebombing

On the first anniversary of a deadly antisemitic firebombing in Boulder, Colorado, the local Students for Justice in Palestine group released a statement defending and honoring the attacker. Mohamed Sabry Soliman threw two Molotov cocktails into a “Run for Their Lives” rally supporting Israeli hostages, killing 82‑year‑old Karen Diamond and burning 13 others. The statement praised Soliman and framed the mass burning of civilians as a justified political act, not as murder or terrorism.

Reports show the Boulder Students for Justice in Palestine statement described Soliman’s attack as “direct action against one manifestation of the Zionist death cult” and a “decisive act of resistance against a genocidal global order.” The group claimed he “hurled a Molotov cocktail into the heart of the Run for Their Lives march in Boulder, striking against the colonist procession that gathers weekly to celebrate the pretext for ongoing genocide.” They did not present evidence that the rally was anything other than a hostage‑release event.

Calling murder “the only sane response” and attacking U.S. law

In the same statement, Boulder Students for Justice in Palestine insisted the attack was not the act of a fanatic or terrorist but of a rational man. They wrote that “Mohamed chose the only sane response available to a rational human being confronted with the normalization of genocide,” openly rejecting the state’s view that he was “insane — a fanatic, a terrorist, guilty of a hate crime.” They offered no court testimony or psychiatric records from Soliman to back up this claim, only their own ideological framing.

The statement went further, attacking the American justice system and immigration enforcement. Boulder Students for Justice in Palestine lamented that Soliman was given eight consecutive life sentences and demanded his release, calling the punishment an “assassination.” They demanded abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, linking his prosecution to post‑9/11 tactics against Arabs and Muslims. They also declared that “the Palestinian Resistance stands as the sole legitimate authority capable of delivering accountability for the genocidal actions of the Zionist entity,” trying to strip U.S. courts of moral legitimacy.

University and regents push back, but group still spreads its message

University of Colorado Boulder leaders publicly condemned the post and stressed that Boulder Students for Justice in Palestine is not a recognized student organization. An official university statement said “glorification of violence is abhorrent and does not reflect the University of Colorado Boulder’s values,” and noted that the group lost recognized status in fall 2024 for failing to fix policy violations. The Board of Regents passed a resolution stating that “harming and killing innocent people is not resistance” and “should never be celebrated,” directly rejecting the group’s framing.

District Attorney Michael Dougherty, whose office prosecuted Soliman, reminded the public that “the law does not justify setting humans on fire.” He confirmed the eight life sentences as a reasonable response to the attack on elderly and unarmed civilians. Despite this clear legal and moral pushback, Boulder Students for Justice in Palestine’s post spread online before Instagram removed it and the group pulled it from its homepage. Secondary outlets preserved the text, allowing the public to see how far some campus activists are willing to go in praising violence.

Part of a wider pattern of campus radicalization and violence talk

The Boulder case is not an isolated incident. A study by the Antisemitism Research Center found that Students for Justice in Palestine chapters across North America have used Instagram for years to glorify terrorism and violence, often in ways that violate platform rules. Research on student movements shows four common stories used to justify violence: claiming group identity and agency, casting violent acts as “emancipation,” calling them “self‑defense,” and describing activists as victims forced to fight back. In Boulder, the firebombing is framed as self‑defense and “emancipation,” even though the victims were unarmed civilians at a rally.

Broader free speech surveys add another warning sign for parents and taxpayers. Data from the group Freedom of Individual Rights and Expression shows student support for using violence to stop speakers has risen sharply in recent years, with about one in three students now saying it is ever acceptable. Scholars note that ideological leaders who glorify violent “resistance” and dehumanize targets can make real‑world attacks more likely and harder for law enforcement to prevent. When a campus group celebrates an elderly woman burned alive as “rational resistance,” it feeds that dangerous trend and erodes basic moral lines that once united Americans across party lines.