Taishya Adams, who serves on the city council in Boulder, Colorado and is a regular critic of Israel’s efforts to dismantle Hamas’s control of Gaza, has broken with her colleagues by rejecting a statement to condemn the Sunday terrorist attack in Boulder targeting Jews marching in support of the Israeli hostages remaining in captivity in Gaza.

“Conflating antisemitism with anti-Zionism is dangerous and factually incorrect,” Adams told Boulder Reporting Lab when asked about her decision. “I just returned from Palestine where I saw and experience[d] what every minute terror looks and feels like. We will continue to see an increase in vigilante justice when we do not hold leaders accountable to war crimes.”

Adams had previously called for the council to advocate for a ceasefire in Gaza, a position the body rejected.

Rather than join her municipal colleagues, the councilwoman released her own response to the attack where she stated that her decision to pass on signing “did not reflect any lack of empathy or support for Jewish community members – or an attempt to somehow justify the horrific act committed by this individual. Whatever his motivation, violence and terror are NEVER the answer.”

Adams explained that she felt the statement lacked “an acknowledgement that, based on his recorded comments, this was both an act of antisemitism and anti-Zionism. If we are to prevent future violence and additional attacks in our community, I believe we need to be real about the possible motivations for this heinous act. Denying our community the full truth about the attack denies us the ability to fully protect ourselves and each other.”

The statement which Adams rejected included the support of Boulder’s Mayor Aaron Brockett and Mayor Pro Tem Lauren Folkerts, alongside council members Matt Benjamin, Tina Marquis, Ryan Schuchard, Nicole Speer, Mark Wallach and Tara Winer. City Manager Nuria Rivera-Vandermyde also signed.

Boulder’s leaders stated that “as our community continues to reel from the act of violence and terror that occurred on our beloved Pearl Street Mall yesterday, we, as Boulder City Council members and city manager, acknowledge in the strongest possible terms that this was a targeted, antisemitic attack.”

The statement – which made no mention of Israel, Hamas, or Gaza – called for standing “in solidarity and sadness with those directly impacted by the attack as well as Boulder’s entire Jewish community. We are united in condemning this hateful act of terror against Jewish people.”

Alleged attacker Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, faces charges including attempted first-degree murder after deliberation; attempted first-degree murder with extreme indifference; first-degree assault, including against an at-risk victim older than 70, and possession of an incendiary device for a Molotov cocktail and makeshift flamethrower attack on the “Run for Their Lives” event which resulted in burns for 12 people. The court has scheduled him to see a judge on Thursday.

Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty said that Soliman could receive as much as 384 years in prison for the attempted murder charges alone. A potential life sentence also hangs over Soliman’s head should a jury convict him of a federal hate crime charge filed against him. Investigators say that he claimed he had planned the attack for a year, waited until after his daughter’s high school graduation, planned to die during his antisemitic act, and said he sought to “kill all Zionist people.”

Bishop Grewell, the acting US attorney for the district of Colorado, said on Monday that “he acted because he hated what he called ‘the Zionist group.’”

According to the Trump administration, Soliman, an Egyptian who reportedly yelled “Free Palestine” during the terror attack, lives in the United States illegally, having overstayed his visa. His wife and children now face deportation.

“Today, DHS and ICE are taking the family of suspected Boulder, Colorado, terrorist, and illegal alien, Mohamed Soliman, into ICE custody,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement. Soliman, she added, “will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. We are investigating to what extent his family knew about this heinous attack, if they had knowledge of it, or if they provided support to it.”

According to the FBI and police, Soliman’s family has cooperated with the investigation.

Boulder Police Chief Stephen Redfearn called the attack “shocking,” adding that “seeing this man throwing Molotov cocktails onto human beings is just disgusting.”

Oren Segal, the Anti-Defamation League’s senior vice president of counter-extremism and intelligence, said that “when you have 600-plus days of rhetoric that is not just about opposition to Israeli government policy but that often features language that dehumanizes Israelis, Zionists and Jews, it creates an atmosphere in which these plots and attacks are much more likely.”

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