US anti-Zionist groups keep backing activists who are incarcerated for violence

Last year, an anti-Israel attacker hurled gasoline bombs into a rally for Israeli hostages in Boulder, Colorado, incinerating and killing an elderly woman and wounding more than a dozen others.

The deadly attack, coming weeks after the murder of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, DC, shook the US Jewish community.

While Jews in Colorado and around the US mourned the deceased victim, Karen Diamond, last week, local anti-Zionist activists backed the attacker, Mohamed Sabry Soliman.

Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Colorado Boulder said in a statement that the firebomber “took direct action against a manifestation of genocidal zionism in our community. We stand with him.”

The statement was part of a pattern in which anti-Israel groups across the US have supported a series of attackers who targeted Jews and others with arson, physical assaults, deadly violence and vandalism.

The campaigns portray the perpetrators as political prisoners engaged in a righteous struggle against “Zionism” and other leftist causes, such as white supremacy, imperialism and colonialism.

Tarek Bazrouk, who pleaded guilty to a series of attacks against Jews in New York, has become a cause célèbre in the anti-Israel movement.

Bazrouk physically attacked his victims during anti-Israel protests in 2024 and 2025, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit hate crimes, and was sentenced to 17 months in prison last year.

Leading activist groups mobilized during his trial, including National Students for Justice in Palestine, Within Our Lifetime, the Palestinian Youth Movement, Pal-Awda, and student groups in New York City.

The activists organized letter-writing campaigns, posted flyers in Bazrouk’s support around New York City, and donated more than $11,000 to his commissary.

Around 200 supporters showed up to his sentencing, forcing the Manhattan court to set up an overflow room where they watched the proceedings via livestream.

The campaign has continued in recent months as activists have held fundraisers for Bazrouk, urged followers to send him books, hung a banner with his name over a highway, and highlighted his imprisonment at rallies.

Casey Goonan, an anti-Israel activist in California, was sentenced to more than 19 years in prison for a series of arson and firebombing attacks. He also pleaded guilty.

Goonan targeted police vehicles and university buildings, not Jews, but framed the attacks as part of a campaign against Israel.

Goonan has also attracted backing from National Students for Justice in Palestine, student activists and his own support group, which released Goonan’s jail-time manifesto rationalizing the attacks in April. Some activists have produced “Free Casey Goonan” shirts and others solicited donations for Goonan’s defense.

Elias Rodriguez, charged with killing the two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, DC, has drawn support from more fringe elements of the anti-Zionist movement, such as the extremist Unity of Fields, prominent online influencers and the Democratic Socialists of America’s Liberation Caucus. (The national branch of the Democratic Socialists of America condemned the killings.)

“We need more Elias Rodriguez in this world,” said the Bronx Anti-War Coalition, an activist group that holds rallies in New York City.

Anti-Zionist activists have also backed Jakhi McCray, an anti-Israel protester who pleaded guilty to torching police vehicles in New York City, and Mohamad Hamad, in prison for allegedly spraying antisemitic graffiti on Jewish sites in Pittsburgh.

The University of Colorado Boulder denounced the student group’s statement in support of Sabry as “glorification of violence.” The university said it had reported the statement and that the student group was not recognized by the university.

The students’ statement called Solimon’s attack on the hostage rally a strike “against the colonist procession that gathers weekly to celebrate the pretext for ongoing genocide” and a “decisive act of resistance against a genocidal global order.”

“Mohamed chose the only sane response available to a rational human being confronted with the normalization of genocide,” the group said. “His individual bravery exists alongside the organized armed struggle of those who resist the zionist occupation.”

“Resistance is our duty,” the statement said. “Death to settler colonialism in all its forms.”