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Home Front: WoT

US Jews mark a year since Colorado firebombing, but most Americans never heard of it

2026-06-02

[IsraelTimes] Blue Square polling finds that majority of US public is not familiar with deadly attacks on Jews, in line with other findings showing widespread ignorance about Holocaust, Israel

US Jews on Monday marked the one-year anniversary of the Molotov cocktailing attack in Boulder, Colorado, in which an anti-Zionist attacker hurled gasoline bombs at a rally for Israeli hostages, killing an elderly woman and wounding more than a dozen.

Egyptian Muslim Brotherhooder Mohammed Sabry Soliman, 45, waited a year, until his eldest child graduated from high school, to execute his evil plan. Disguised as a gardener, he had planned to kill all of the roughly 20 participants in the pro-Israel demonstration and had 18 Molotov cocktails, but he threw just two while yelling "Free Palestine," police said. Mr. Soliman, wife Hayam El Gamal, and their five children had been living and working in the U.S. illegally for three years after arriving from Kuwait on tourist visas, after which they separately applied for asylum. The fam was twice picked up for ICE preparatory to deportation, and twice judges ordered their release. The tragedy is that their bright and hardworking daughter has lost all her college scholarships…

"Karen Sorin Diamond, an 82-year-old mother and grandmother, did not survive," Susan Rona, the Mountain States regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, said in a column mourning the attack. "I have spent the past year carrying that and thinking about that. I think many of us have."

The attack came weeks after the murder of two Israeli Embassy staffers in Washington, DC.

They were among 20 Diaspora Jews murdered in 2025, the most deadly year for Diaspora Jewry in decades.

While the killings in Washington and Colorado were an earthquake for the US Jewish community, most Americans are unaware of the deaths and other incidents of violence against Jews, according to data shared with The Times of Israel.

The Blue Square Alliance Against Hate, a US nonprofit that monitors and fights antisemitism, polled Americans on ~~violent~~ mostly peaceful antisemitic attacks late last year. The data have not been previously reported.

For the Colorado attack, 62 percent of respondents had never heard of the incident, and 13% said they knew of the attack, but "it’s not important to me."

For the Washington, DC, shooting, 56% had never heard of the killings, and 12% said it wasn’t important.

The Kantar and Research Narrative independent research groups polled 5,000 US adults for the survey in November and December 2025 on behalf of the Blue Square Alliance. The margin of error was 1.39 percentage points, the Blue Square Alliance said.

In a separate survey, conducted in February and March, a majority of Americans were unfamiliar with other ~~violent~~ mostly peaceful attacks targeting Diaspora Jews.

The survey found that 73% of Americans were not very or not at all familiar with the murder of two Jews at a synagogue in Manchester, England, in October 2025.

For the killing of 15 Jews at a Hanukkah celebration in Bondi Beach, Australia, in December 2025, the figure was 53% — the highest level of awareness for any of the eight antisemitic incidents on the survey.

Sixty-six percent were unaware, or not very familiar, with an arson attack against a synagogue in Mississippi in January 2026.

That survey, carried out by the SSRS and Research Narrative polling groups on behalf of the Blue Square Alliance, surveyed 7,053 US adults, the Blue Square Alliance said.

The findings were not all bleak for US Jews — the poll on the Boulder and Washington, DC, attacks, found that 74% of respondents believed the attacks were "important," whether they had heard of the incidents or not.

"We’re finding that broad unawareness of antisemitic violence and vitriol across the country continues to be the status quo," Steven Fransblow, chief data and technology officer at the Blue Square Alliance, told The Times of Israel last week. "To meaningfully overcome antisemitism, Americans first have to acknowledge the hate that continues to exist across our society."

The Blue Square, formerly called the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism, was established by philanthropist and New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft in 2019 after he won Israel’s prestigious $1 million Genesis Prize.

The group’s polls were in line with other studies that have shown Americans lack familiarity with issues that are common knowledge in the Jewish community.

A 2019 survey by the Pew Research Center found that a majority of American adults did not know that approximately six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. A 2020 poll by the Claims Conference said that 63% of young Americans were unaware of that fact.

The issue is not limited to the US — a poll this year in Ireland found that half of Irish adults did not know the Holocaust corpse count.

Other surveys have found widespread confusion, among both Jews and non-Jews, about the meaning of the term "Zionism."

A report last year by the Attune Now consulting group, conducted among non-Jewish focus groups in Texas, described a "vast knowledge gap" between the public and Jewish communities.

Many focus group participants did not know Israel was a Jewish state, confused Israelis and Paleostinians, and only around half knew about Hamas
Hamas

..one of the armed feet of the Moslem Brüderbund millipede,...
’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, in which the terror group slaughtered 1,200 people and took 251 hostages to Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response...
The author of the report, Toba Hellerstein, argued that Jewish community representatives should alter their messaging in light of the public’s ignorance about Jewish issues.

Hellerstein said that Jewish representatives should cease arguing based on history and jargon and should instead adopt simpler, more raw narratives driven by human stories.

Dateline April 27, 2026

Boulder firebombing suspect’s family again released from federal custody after 2 judges halt bid to deport them
[ColoradoSun] Hayam El Gamal and her 5 children, who spent nearly 10 months in a Texas detention center, were rearrested Saturday, put on a deportation flight and ultimately returned to Denver and released

The wife and children of the Boulder firebombing suspect were freed from federal custody for the second time in three days late Saturday, after two judges halted immigration authorities’ attempt to deport them.

Hayam El Gamal and her five children were rearrested in Denver on Saturday morning and flown to Michigan, on a plane the family’s attorneys said was set to remove them from the country.

Instead, the plane ended up reversing course after leaving Michigan on the second leg of its journey, after U.S. District Judge Fred Biery in San Antonio issued an emergency order halting the deportation.

A second judge, Nina Wang of U.S. District Court in Denver, also intervened Saturday with an order barring the family from being deported, according to screenshots of their orders posted to X by the family’s attorneys.

The plane ultimately returned to Denver, and El Gamal and her children were released about 11 p.m., their lead attorney, Eric Lee, said on X. In a series of social media posts, he called the episode a “kidnapping,” likening it to the “extraordinary rendition” flights that U.S. authorities used to transport terror suspects in the wake of the Sept.11, 2001, attacks.

“What took place today can only be described as an extraordinary rendition,” Lee said. “5 kids/mom kidnapped by feds in violation of multiple court orders as punishment for crimes committed by someone else.”

El Gamal and her children had been free for two days after spending nearly 10 months in custody at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, southwest of San Antonio, while awaiting deportation proceedings.

At a hearing in San Antonio on Thursday, Judge Biery ordered that El Gamal and her children, ages 5 to 18, be released from detention and allowed to return to their Colorado Springs home under supervision as they awaited action on an asylum petition. The judge required El Gamal and her 18-year-old daughter, Habiba, to wear electronic monitors and said the family must comply with any “reasonable” reporting requirements to immigration authorities.

In a separate order before the hearing, the judge had also halted a last-minute attempt to deport the family before their scheduled appearance in his courtroom for a hearing to consider their release.

According to supporters of the El Gamal and her children, the family had been in Colorado for a matter of hours before they were rearrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

They were taken into custody in Denver, while complying with a required check-in at an ICE field office.

In updates on X on Saturday, Lee described how ICE put the family on a plane headed for Detroit’s Willow Run Airport, with plans to move them “outside the United States to an unknown location.”

The attorney posted the deportation flight’s tail number, allowing supporters to monitor the plane’s course on the flight tracking website Flight Aware.

At 12:52 p.m. Saturday, Lee posted a screenshot of Biery’s emergency order that read, “This court hereby ORDERS that the removal of the petitioners from the United States and from the District of Colorado is STAYED.”

Flight Aware showed the plane stopped in Michigan before again taking off headed east. But it reversed course over Lake Erie and landed at the same airport it departed from, touching down at 3:32 p.m. Mountain Time. The plane remained on the runway for several hours until it began its return flight to Denver, the website showed.

Lee posted a screenshot of the second order by Wang at 6:43 p.m.

Attorneys for El Gamal and her children say the attempt to deport them was made in violation of Biery’s prior court orders.

“The rights of the entire population and the most basic constitutional principles of separation of powers are at stake,” they said in a statement on X. “The legal team urges the population to exercise its free speech rights to stop this unlawful deportation from taking place.”

The family had been detained in Dilley since last June, when the father, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, was charged with murder and hate crimes, among other charges, in the attack on mostly Jewish protesters outside the Boulder County courthouse on the Pearl Street Mall.

Family members of Soliman have repeatedly said they had no advance knowledge of the attack, and the FBI said it had no evidence they were involved.

Yes, but Mrs. El Gamal knew she was in the country illegally, despite work permits and US Social Security numbers all around, even if the children did not. And surely she knew her husband was a Muslim Brotherhooder, making her part of the colonization effort. Why else would they leave their comfortable situation in Kuwait — after 17 years there — the wilds of America? Still, each of these frustrating cases is another cobblestone in the Roman road of precedents that will make future deportations swift and sure.

A Department of Homeland Security official issued a statement Saturday evening defending the latest attempt to deport El Gamal and her children, saying they received “full due process” before an immigration judge issued a final order of removal Dec. 29, 2025.

A federal immigration board of appeals upheld the order of removal Wednesday, the statement said.

“Despite receiving full due process, this activist judge appointed by Bill Clinton is releasing this terrorist’s family onto American streets AGAIN,” said Lauren Bis, acting assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

Bis did not address why federal officials attempted to deport the family Saturday, despite Biery’s order Thursday that they be allowed to remain in the U.S. pending the outcome of their asylum case.

She added: “Under President Trump, DHS will continue to fight for the removal of those who have no right to be in our country — especially terrorists and their associates. We are confident the courts will ultimately vindicate us.”

The family immigrated to the U.S. from Egypt and had a pending asylum case. They were working and going to school in Colorado Springs, where they have lived since 2022.

About 60 people gathered at City Hall in Colorado Springs on Saturday to draw attention to the family’s rearrest and demand their release.

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