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Colorado voters weigh candidate for Congress who declined to call Boulder firebombing antisemitic
A democratic socialist once fired from a law job for pro-Palestinian comments is hoping to unseat a longtime member of Congress in Colorado’s primary election Tuesday, following primary victories for allies in New York.
Attorney Melat Kiros is a viable contender, according to polls, which show her about even with Rep. Diana DeGette in the race for Colorado’s 1st congressional district, which DeGette has held since 1997. One other candidate, University of Colorado Regent Wandy James, is polling a distant third for the seat, which includes almost all of the city and county of Denver.
Kiros, who was born the year DeGette took office, has used Israel policy as a wedge throughout the campaign — calling for an arms embargo against Israel, including funding for defensive weapons like the Iron Dome.
Last week, Kiros drew criticism for declining to call a firebombing attack at a vigil for Israeli hostages in Boulder last year antisemitic.
But some Jews are supporting her, saying that Kiros’ harsh criticism of Israel is necessary and warranted. DeGette has outfundraised Kiros at a 3-to-1 ratio, while Kiros has picked up endorsements from Sen. Bernie Sanders, Justice Democrats and the Sunrise Movement.
Kiros’ candidacy in the deep-blue district, where DeGette won three-quarters of the vote in 2024, will test the momentum of recent congressional primary victories by Democratic Socialists of America–backed candidates Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez in New York. Avila Chevalier personally campaigned for Kiros on Monday on X.
The race also comes during a tenuous month for Jews in the state. Students in Boulder issued a statement June 3 praising the Boulder attack as an act of “resistance.” Denver Jewish Day School, the largest Jewish school in the state, sent kids home early from summer camp June 11 after receiving threats. And last week the ADL filed a civil rights complaint alleging severe antisemitic harassment in Boulder schools.
Colorado voters will also go to the polls Tuesday to choose their nominees to succeed Gov. Jared Polis. Leading the Democratic candidates in polls is Attorney General Phil Weiser, who is the son and grandson of Holocaust survivors. (His top opponent, Sen. Michael Bennet, has a Jewish mother but does not identify as Jewish.)
Here’s 4 things to know about the congressional race ahead of the election.
1. Kiros entered politics after a pro-Palestinian blog post got her fired.
Kiros, whose family immigrated to the U.S. from Ethiopia when she was a baby, was working as an associate for law firm Sidley Austin in November 2023 when it signed onto a letter to law schools instructing them to take an “unequivocal stance” against antisemitism and Islamophobia, including protests that call for the elimination of Israel, which the letter called antisemitic.
In a Medium post responding to the letter, Kiros wrote that she agreed with the stance against antisemitism and that “there is no justification for the attacks on Israel on Oct. 7.” But she added that she did not believe that calling for the elimination of Israel qualified as antisemitism, partly because that perspective foreclosed on the possibility of a one-state solution where Israelis and Palestinians enjoyed equal rights.
“By chilling future lawyers’ employment prospects for criticism of the Israeli government’s actions and its legitimacy,” Kiros wrote, “you are complicit in Israel’s weaponization of anti-Semitism.”
The post received some traction online, and Sidley asked Kiros to take it down. She refused, reportedly leading to her firing. She then worked as communications director for 2024 congressional candidate John Padora, who placed third in that year’s Democratic primary in Colorado’s fourth congressional district.
2. She repeatedly declined to call the Boulder attack antisemitic
Kiros was grilled on her stances about Israel in a June 22 interview with a Denver news channel.
She said weapons that defend Israeli citizens against attacks from Iran and Hezbollah “give Israel the cover to continue the genocide that’s taking place in Palestine and now the ethnic cleansing that’s taking place in Lebanon.” (Genocide scholars have debated whether the war in Gaza rises to the level of genocide.)
Some of Kiros’ comments on Israel appeared to take a more centrist position than some of her far-left allies. Though she has campaigned with controversial streamer Hasan Piker, she said she disagreed with his statement that Hamas is a lesser evil than Israel.
And asked whether Israel “had it coming” on Oct. 7, Kiros said “no, not at all — it’s about understanding the conditions in which violence and war happens.” She said Israel had resisted change despite decades of international frustration with its policies; her job as a politician, she said, was to change those conditions.
But the remark that drew the most attention was her response to a question about the Boulder attack, which took place at an event calling for the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas. The attacker, Mohammed Soliman, was heard saying “Free Palestine” as he threw molotov cocktails and used an improvised flamethrower to burn his victims.
Soliman left behind writings in which he declared that “Zionism is our enemies until Jerusalem is liberated and they are expelled from our land,” and further described Israel as a “cancer entity,” according to law enforcement.
He injured 13 people in the ambush, including an 82-year-old woman who later died of her wounds.
“I don’t know what was in the heart of the perpetrator,” Kiros said. “All I know is that he attacked innocent people because of what they might have believed. And I don’t even know what the people that were at that protest believed, too. In fact most of them were probably just there to ask that the people who were kidnapped on Oct. 7 be returned to their families.”
Asked to confirm that she thought the attack was not antisemitic, Kiros said, “I don’t know. I don’t know what his intentions were.”
In a statement to the Forward, DeGette said, “It’s never okay to rationalize antisemitism or excuse an act of terrorism. Those aren’t Denver values and we deserve better.”
The Kiros campaign did not respond to an inquiry.
3. DeGette, the incumbent, has a mixed record on Israel
DeGette, 68, has also pitched herself as a progressive. She was an early supporter of Medicare for All and includes abolishing ICE in her campaign positions. Her supporters highlight her efforts to secure abortion rights and her role in managing Trump’s first impeachment in 2019.
But unlike Kiros, DeGette has supported a two-state solution. DeGette voted for an April 2024 foreign aid package that included $5.2 billion to replenish Israeli air defenses.
“I believe Israel should have a nation, and I believe Palestine should have a nation, and I believe we need to move towards that solution,” DeGette told Colorado Public Radio. “I believe Israel has a right to defend itself.”
Her support for the war in Gaza flagged as it dragged on. In December 2025, DeGette voted against the National Defense Authorization Act that included provisions for funding additional weapons to Israel — and calling for a permanent ceasefire along with a surge in humanitarian aid.
But some constituents remained unsatisfied. DeGette’s heated exchange with one at a campaign event earlier this year went viral on social media. Someone asked “why she kept sending money for bombs,” and DeGette replied she was only funding defensive arms. When the constituent stormed off, saying DeGette didn’t care about Palestinians, the congresswoman followed her to correct her.
Finally, DeGette said, “If the only issue that you care about is this issue, then you should not vote for me.”
4. Some Jews in her district support Kiros. Others are worried.
Rabbi Rachel Kobrin, the spiritual leader of Congregation Rodef Shalom, wrote in the Denver Post last week that Kiros’ candidacy scared her as a liberal Jewish woman because it reflected a coarsened public discourse around Israel and ruled out a two-state solution.
“I do not believe Milat Kiros has shown the curiosity, humility, and empathy necessary to represent my community as a political leader,” Kobrin wrote.
One Jewish reader responded to Kobrin’s column by coming to her defense.
“We fought the state of South Africa as an apartheid state that was violently and legally separating and killing its black native citizens,” wrote Vivian Weinstein, a Denver resident critical of the war. “In the same way, Israel cannot continue to exist as an apartheid state according to its own law.”
The post Colorado voters weigh candidate for Congress who declined to call Boulder firebombing antisemitic appeared first on The Forward.
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Minnesota man charged with ISIS-inspired plot on Jewish-owned Mall of America
(JTA) — The FBI accused an 18-year-old man of buying an AK-47 assault rifle with plans to commit a mass shooting in support of ISIS at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, the largest indoor shopping mall in North America.
Sheikhdoon Abdullahi Mohamud, of Richfield, Minnesota, was charged on Wednesday with one count of knowingly receiving a firearm and ammunition in order to commit a federal crime of terrorism, according to a federal complaint filed on Wednesday.
Mohamud’s attorney did not respond to JTA’s request for comment.
Mohamud wanted to attack the Mall of America because he believed its owners to be Jewish, the FBI said in a statement. He planned to kill between 30 and 60 people, according to messages he exchanged with a confidential source, according to the complaint.
Mall of America is owned and operated by Triple Five Group, controlled by the Ghermezian family, a Canadian family of Iranian Jewish origin.
Messages sent in September 2026 included a video in which Mohamud pledged allegiance to ISIS, the complaint said. He planned his attack for Oct. 24 because he expected a crowd at the Hmong Arts Celebration scheduled for that day.
The complaint said an undercover FBI agent sold an AK-47 rendered inoperable, four 30-round magazines and 200 rounds of ammunition to Mohamud for $600 on Oct. 6. During the sale, Mohamud confirmed his plans to commit a mass shooting. Mohamud was arrested shortly after the sale.
The complaint said Mohamud wanted to commit an attack similar to the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in which 49 victims were killed; the Bondi Beach mass-shooting in Sydney last December, during which 15 victims were killed during a Hanukkah celebration; and a New Orleans truck-ramming attack that killed 14 victims in New Orleans on Jan. 1, 2025.
The investigation into Mohamud began around December 2024, when he messaged the confidential source on multiple social media platforms, according to the complaint, detailing his desire to travel to Somalia to join a group that the U.S. has designated a foreign terrorist organization. If travel was not possible due to financial constraints, he said would move forward with an attack in Minnesota.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Minnesota man charged with ISIS-inspired plot on Jewish-owned Mall of America appeared first on The Forward.
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Is Israel or Iran a bigger threat to the U.S.? Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed won’t say
(JTA) — Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed was asked multiple times by a debate moderator on Thursday which country he considers a bigger threat to the U.S.: Iran or Israel.
Each time, he parried.
“That’s a ridiculous hypothetical because here’s what’s happening right now: Our ostensible ally in Israel has lobbied us to go to war with Iran,” said El-Sayed, Michigan’s Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate.
“I don’t consider an ally a country that takes us to wars we don’t need to fight, and I don’t want to be fighting wars we don’t need to fight,” he added, describing both as “kind of dangerous.” Another attempt yielded a similar response, with El-Sayed denouncing “one at risk of attacking us, one getting us into wars we have no business fighting.”
El-Sayed, a former county health official, was responding to a question repeatedly posed by WOOD TV8 political reporter Rick Albin, in a debate against his Republican opponent, former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers. The two candidates hurled insults at each other during the hourlong discussion, often returning to issues related to Israel and the Middle East.
After making criticism of Israel a top issue in his primary campaign, El-Sayed eked out a victory against U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens in that early August race. Although he has earned the support of many democratic socialists, including Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, El-Sayed has stated that he is not a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Rogers, on the other hand, has the official endorsement of President Donald Trump. However, the candidate has been distancing himself from the president, including by criticizing the trade war with Canada.
Results of a CBS News poll published earlier this week showed El-Sayed leading Rogers, by 45.6% to 41.4%, with a 3.8% margin of error. A Quantus Insights poll released on Wednesday, meanwhile, gave El-Sayed a slightly narrower lead, with 47.6% to Rogers’s 46.5%, and a 7.8% margin of error.
While El-Sayed has been meeting with Jewish voters and leaders, he has not budged on certain issues of concern to many Jewish voters. For example, he has indicated only a willingness to recognize Israel’s identity as a Jewish nation-state if Israelis and Palestinians jointly agree to it..
Liberal Michigan rabbis last month signed a petition from the Zioness Action Fund, a progressive Zionist group, calling upon the Democratic Party to agree to “nonnegotiable” principles related to Jewish safety and Israel. A separate cohort of Michigan Jewish leaders urged community members to reject El-Sayed entirely.
Rogers and his representatives in August indicated that they would like AIPAC to refrain from spending directly on him in the general election, according to media reports. Asked about this at the Thursday debate, he said he’d welcome “anybody that wants to help my campaign stop a guy who can’t condemn terrorism in our own country.”
El-Sayed condemned the March attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township, but added that “hurt people hurt people,” which critics interpreted as justifying the attacker’s actions. He later apologized for those remarks.
Rogers has repeatedly slammed his opponent for taking funds from donors affiliated with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Unity & Justice Fund super PAC and other groups and individuals.
El-Sayed, on the other hand, accused Rogers on Thursday of accepting corporate PAC money and labeled him the “guy who’s going to rubber stamp everything Donald Trump tells him to rubber stamp.”
The two candidates criticized each other’s policies and interrupted each other so often that Albin, the moderator, needed to step in.
“We’ve got dozens of questions we want to get to,” Albin said. “You can’t litigate all of these with 14 different rebuttals.”
Even prior to a pause for ads, Albin announced that the station is going “to take a break from this pleasant conversation.” When they returned, he declared that “in 30 years of doing debates, I’ve never seen it continue during the commercial, but it did.”
The candidates continued to clash over Iran, with El-Sayed accusing the U.S. government of teaching “the Iranian regime that they had a choke [hold] on the Strait of Hormuz.”
“That’s the kind of policy you’re going to get from a guy who wants to be a sock puppet for the Trump administration,” El-Sayed added.
Rogers, meanwhile, claimed that the U.S. had set back Iran’s nuclear program by at least 20 years, adding that “this would be the time to wrap it up.”
As for Israel, Rogers said he supports “the right to exist for the Jewish state, and the right to defend itself in a very difficult neighborhood.” The only way Israel could lose his support, Rogers stated, would be if the country talked about using nuclear weapons.
Israel is widely assessed to possess an arsenal of approximately 90 nuclear warheads, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The country is not a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Israel has never acknowledged possessing nuclear weapons.
Albin then turned to El-Sayed, noting the politician’s opposition to direct U.S. military funding for Israel. He asked, however, whether that position could change “if Israel were attacked tomorrow by Iran or another state actor.”
“I want our tax dollars spent here,” El-Sayed responded. “Israel has pushed us to go to war in Iran, and of course, my colleague, who thinks there’s a war for everything, went right along with it.”
When Albin pushed again for a yes or no answer, El-Sayed replied that he doesn’t want the U.S. “buying weapons for other countries.”
Toward the end of the discussion related to the Middle East, Rogers recognized the third anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel. He blasted his opponent for failing “to even acknowledge the pain, the terrorism, the rape, the murders.”
To this accusation, El-Sayed responded, “I’ve condemned that. I didn’t turn it into theater like you did.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Is Israel or Iran a bigger threat to the U.S.? Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed won’t say appeared first on The Forward.
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Ossoff says IDF violated law of armed conflict in Gaza, but genocide is an issue for international courts
(JTA) — Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff and Republican challenger Rep. Mike Collins clashed over Israel’s conduct in Gaza, U.S. weapons sales to Israel and the war in Iran during Thursday’s debate in Georgia’s closely watched Senate race.
The race could help determine control of the Senate, with implications for U.S. policy toward Israel.
The incumbent Ossoff, who is Jewish, has long supported Israel’s security, but over the last two years he has criticized its conduct in the Gaza war and voted to block some U.S. arms sales to the country.
A day after the third anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack, Ossoff was asked whether Israel had committed genocide in Gaza, whether he was concerned about growing anti-Israel sentiment within the Democratic Party and whether he would support a proposed $2.8 billion U.S. weapons package for Israel.
“The question of genocide is a question of whether a government has the specific intent to destroy a national or ethnic group, and that is a question for the International Criminal Court,” Ossoff responded. “There is no doubt in my mind that Israeli forces prosecuting the war in Gaza violated the law of armed conflict and international humanitarian law, and I care deeply about the security of the Israeli people, among whom are members of my family.
“I also care about innocent Palestinian life,” Ossoff continued, “and make no apology for my votes.”
Collins accused Ossoff of having aligned himself with anti-Israel figures including Twitch streamer Hasan Piker and Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed.
“Imagine being a U.S. senator, and out there recruiting, endorsing, and supporting these people that want to see Israel wiped off the map,” Collins said. “They would rather be for Iran than for Israel — now that’s who Jon Ossoff is supporting.”
Piker had previously called Ossoff a possible contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination. He subsequently disavowed Ossoff after the senator condemned antisemitic comments, Jewish Insider reported in August.
During the hourlong debate, Ossoff repeatedly condemned the U.S. war in Iran while highlighting Collins’ support for it. At least three times Ossoff called the war in Iran a “disaster” or “disastrous,” and he blamed the war for rising gas prices in the state of Georgia.
Collins, on the other hand, said he supported the war as necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. “The president had every right to go in there and make sure that Iran does not get a nuclear weapon,” Collins said. “The IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency], they had already sounded the bells, the alarms that Iran was close to getting a nuclear weapon. And the thing is, Iran doesn’t only want to decimate and kill Israel, they want us as well.”
The evening was not without its personal attacks. Collins described Ossoff as “a radical” and a “trust-fund kid who has never had a job in his life,” while Ossoff repeatedly spotlighted the alleged ties between Collins and white nationalists. A recent report alleged that Collins’ former aides were involved with antisemitic and white nationalist rhetoric.
Ossoff leads Collins by about nine percentage points in FiftyPlusOne’s polling average as of Oct. 9.
The candidates are scheduled for a second debate hosted by the Atlanta Press Club on Oct. 13.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Ossoff says IDF violated law of armed conflict in Gaza, but genocide is an issue for international courts appeared first on The Forward.
