The City of Boulder this week released a statement condemning the June 1 attack on a march supporting hostages held in Gaza as a “targeted, antisemitic attack.”
“We are united in condemning this hateful act of terror against Jewish people,” the statement read.
The statement was signed by Mayor Aaron Brockett, Mayor Pro Tem Lauren Folkerts, Councilmembers Matt Benjamin, Tina Marquis, Ryan Schuchard, Nicole Speer, Mark Wallach and Tara Winer, as well as City Manager Nuria Rivera-Vandermyde. The only councilmember who did not sign was Taishya Adams. Most every Boulder-area leader has called it an antisemitic attack, and the suspect has been charged with a federal hate crime.
In a statement to Boulder Reporting Lab, Adams said she disagreed with how the city characterized the attack and had limited time to discuss proposed changes with her colleagues due to travel. At the core of her objection, she said, was her desire to describe the attack as “anti-Zionist.”
“Conflating antisemitism with anti Zionism is dangerous and factually incorrect,” she wrote in a text message to Boulder Reporting Lab.
“I just returned from Palestine where I saw and experience[d] what every minute terror looks and feels like,” she said. “We will continue to see an increase in vigilante justice when we do not hold leaders accountable to war crimes.”
Adams, who is a council liaison for the Boulder-Nablus Sister City Project, has been an outspoken critic of Israel’s war in Gaza and has repeatedly pushed the council to consider a ceasefire resolution that was rejected last year. She said she is “bracing for the hate I’m about to receive” for not signing the statement.
Here is part of a separate, public statement she released on the afternoon of June 3:
My decision to withhold my signature from the June 2 city statement 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.
What I felt the statement lacked was 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.
You can read our ongoing coverage of the Pearl Street attack here.
Well Boulder. You get what you vote for. Congrats!
I agree with Ms. Taishya Adams and support her act of political courage.
Calling for the return of hostages does not make one a zionist, and the fact that you can’t figure that out makes you and Adams antisemites.
You just made an illogical leap from Adam’s intention to clarify the scope of the attacker’s intentions to the fact that those marching for return of the hostages may or may not have identified as Zionists.
So if they were (((Zionists))) does that mean they deserved to have been set on fire in a terrorist attack? Think really hard about your answer, Roxanne.
I agree with Councilwoman’s assessment. It is not all Israelis who support the continued attacks on children and the elderly in Gaza. It is the Zionists who for decades worked to claim all of Gaza and the peninsula at their territory.
The attack was horrific. But to question anyone who disagrees with Israel’s aggression in Gaza as antisemitic clouds the issue and overlooks the real victims of the continuing attacks.
This conversation requires clarity of definitions. If Zionism is understood as the movement supporting the Jewish people’s right to self-determination through a sovereign state, then anti-Zionism—defined as opposition to that right—is, by its nature, antisemitic. Denying Jews the same right afforded to other peoples is a discriminatory double standard.
Furthermore, those who sincerely—but perhaps uncritically—label Israel’s response to a terrorist attack as “genocide” should reflect on the broader context. Why is it that Israel’s defensive war is the one conflict that has disrupted life on U.S. college campuses and even the normal operations of the Boulder City Council, while atrocities such as the killing of over 500,000 Yemenis or the genocide in Darfur by Arab militias generated no comparable public outcry?
If outrage is selectively applied only when Jews are involved, that is not a moral stance—it is a form of antisemitism. In that light, a public official’s refusal to support a basic statement condemning antisemitism raises serious concerns. Whether through intent or through a failure to apply the same standards across global conflicts, such a position contributes to the normalization of antisemitic attitudes.
For those genuinely trying to understand the situation, it is worth asking: What are the sources shaping your view, and do they apply consistent standards to all peoples and conflicts?
My wife and I have attended that vigil. We are members of Bonai Shalom. The man sprayed a group of Jews – my friends and neighbors – with a makeshift flamethrower to set them on fire. He wasn’t distinguishing between those who support Israel’s right to exist, from those who support the current Israeli government, from others in the group (there are many) who oppose the current Israeli government, or those who were just there to bring continued awareness to the hostages held in Gaza. As he yelled, “End all Zionists” – he was really just aiming to kill every Jew before him. And so it goes. We have to hear as folks (many – not Jewish) engage in wordplay to define who we are as a minority. Polls show that over 8 in 10 Jews in America believe in the right of Israel to exist. While many of us may disagree over what the current Israeli government is doing in Gaza – that fact holds true. There are exceptions of course, but the truth is the vast majority of Jews in Boulder and the rest of the country are Zionists. No matter how stridently others try to force their own twisted version of the word on us (again – most of them not Jewish – but we are somehow the only minority that doesn’t get to define who WE are), “Zionist” = a belief in the self-determination of the Jewish people and a belief in the basic existence of the State of Israel. So what is the takeaway here by differentiating between ‘Zionist’ and Jew in the wake of this horrific attack? That 8 in 10 Jews are ‘Zionists’ – therefore 8 in 10 of those attacked somehow deserved their fate? Does it mean that 80% of Jewish Americans are somehow culpable in an attack like this where someone traveled 100 miles to set human beings alight? Today, it’s clear that for many, ‘Zionist’ is merely code for ‘Jew’ and an excuse to engage in the same kind of Jew hatred and violence that makes a Jewish State so vital in the minds and hearts of American Jews. The fact that some of our own neighbors here in Boulder refuse to recognize this is a wake up call. Anti-semitism is indeed alive and well here in the Boulder Bubble. We see it vividly through the views of at least one member of the City Council who shows her true stripes in being unable, even now just days after this attack, to summon basic empathy and instead turns a simple statement of sorrow into linguistic gymnastics that – in essence- blame the victims.
You define Zionist as the belief in the right to self-determination. What exactly does that mean? Does it include the right to determine to remove all Palestinians from Gaza by any means necessary? Because that’s what Netanyahu is doing and those who identify as Zionists seem to be all onboard with that. And why is it that many Jews feel they alone have the right to self-determination and a Jewish state, but that can not be allowed for Palestinians in Palestine or anywhere? That in itself is a hypocritical double standard. All for me, none for thee.
Zionism Defined Accurately:
Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people, like any other people, have the right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland—Israel. It is not synonymous with support for any specific Israeli government or policy. Just as being an American patriot does not mean endorsing every U.S. administration, being a Zionist does not equate to supporting Prime Minister Netanyahu or military actions in Gaza.
False Equivalence Between Zionism and Expulsion of Palestinians:
The claim that Zionism includes “removing all Palestinians from Gaza by any means necessary” is a misrepresentation. The current war in Gaza was initiated after the October 7 massacre by Hamas, in which over 1,200 Israelis were murdered, many raped and tortured, and hundreds taken hostage. The ongoing military response is aimed at dismantling Hamas—a designated terrorist organization—not at erasing the Palestinian people. Equating military action against a terror group with a genocidal campaign against an entire population is misleading and inflammatory.
Jews and the Right to Self-Determination:
Jews are not claiming a unique right to self-determination. The Jewish claim to a homeland in Israel is rooted in thousands of years of history, religious tradition, and legal foundations including the Balfour Declaration (1917), the League of Nations Mandate (1922), and the UN Partition Plan (1947). There are currently 57 Muslim-majority countries and over 20 Arab states. Supporting one Jewish state the size of New Jersey amid this does not constitute a denial of rights to others—it’s a long-overdue restoration of Jewish sovereignty in their indigenous homeland.
The Palestinian Right to Self-Determination:
The international community, including most Israelis and Zionists, has repeatedly supported a two-state solution—meaning a sovereign state for Palestinians alongside Israel. However, the repeated rejection of statehood offers by Palestinian leadership (notably in 1947, 2000, and 2008) and the embrace of violence by groups like Hamas have been major obstacles to achieving that outcome. Criticism of failed Palestinian governance or terrorism is not a denial of Palestinian rights—it’s a recognition of the real-world impediments to peace.
Double Standard and Hypocrisy Accusation:
Accusing Jews or Zionists of hypocrisy while ignoring the fact that Israel is the only country in the region offering full rights to Jews, Muslims, Christians, Druze, and others—including representation in parliament, free press, and LGBT rights—is itself a double standard. If support for Jewish self-determination is branded supremacist, while support for 20+ Arab and 50+ Muslim states is seen as normal, then that’s a discriminatory double standard.
How is encouraging support/ awareness for the return of hostages being held by hamas a zionist endeavor? There are American hostages as well as others from non- Israeli nations.
If you read the group’s website, their entire purpose is to shift attention away from the “war” and onto the remaining “hostages”. Most of the hostages that still remain were Israeli soldiers, so actually they are POW, and Israel is actively committing war crimes (genocide) against a civilian population, something Run for their Lives would like you to ignore. In fact they openly state on their website that they do not care by what means the hostages are returned. So I think it’s safe to say that the group almost certainly identifies as Zionist, or if they don’t explicitly identify that way, they do still believe that some lives are more important than others.
I’m proud that a city council member I voted for understands the difference between anti-Zionism and antisemitism — we need more leaders like her to acknowledge the reality of the situation if we want all violence to end.
Dominique R, It is simply a lie – Many of the hostages still held in Gaza are not soldiers. They include women, elderly civilians, foreign nationals, and even children. Claiming they are all Israeli soldiers is simply false and unsupported by credible evidence. And, please, refer to the other replies on definition of Zionism. I am a proud Zionist as most of the other Jews around the world. I also, for the sake of discussion, would like to ask why you do not oppose as passionately the Sudanese government and Janjaweed militias targeted non-Arab ethnic groups, killing an estimated 300,000+ people and displacing millions? It is still ongoing. Are Darfur kids worth less than Palestinian kids?
Isn’t Taishya Adams, in effect, racial profiling the victims? The victims weren’t marching for zionism. And they made no statements to that effect. They were merely raising awareness of the many innocents kidnapped and still held in brutal captivity by a terrorist organization. Attaching the word ‘zionist’ to them is a transparent attempt to dehumanize the victims with an assumption that may be false. These victims were chosen because they were Jews, pure and simple. Adams didn’t sign the statement because she agreed with the terrorist’s motivations.
THANK YOU for speaking out about this. Most of the media misuses the concept of antisemitism and this plays directly into christian nationalism terror.
they were not in israel, they were in boulder, nothing said Zionists