How Safe are Jews in America?

How Safe are Jews in America?

Commentary by Sanford D. Horn

June 4, 2025

Sunday night June first ushered in the Festival of Shavuot (Means Weeks and Oath) for Jewish communities around the world. Yet hours before the celebration by the Jewish people commemorating receiving the Torah from G-d at Mount Sinai, terror struck the Jewish community of Boulder, Colorado, and in turn, terror in the hearts of all Jewish people in America.

It is painfully ironic that on the eve of celebrating the gift of the Torah (literally means instructions), in essence, the laws under which Jewish people have lived 3,337 years, laws of the United States and the state of Colorado were shattered in an act of antisemitic terror leaving 15 people (and a dog) severely injured and hospitalized, as well as a community shaken.

“Tonight, as many prepare to mark the Shavuot holiday, our Jewish community has been subjected to yet another brutal and horrific act of antisemitism. The scourge of antisemitism has metastasized across our country, and we must do more — now — to stop this hatred and violence,” posted US Rep. Joe Neguse (D-CO) on Facebook.

“We stand with the Jewish community — today and always — and will be united in supporting the victims and their families in the weeks ahead, and to redoubling our efforts to stop antisemitism,” continued Neguse, whose district includes Boulder and Fort Collins.

While shouting “Free Palestine,” a depraved Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, ignited an incendiary device, described as a homemade flamethrower, that set ablaze, and sent to the hospital, 15 people having gathered at the Pearl Street Mall. There is a bit of schadenfreude to report, in that Soliman also set himself ablaze. This group of people, called “Run for Their Lives,” held a weekly walk since the October 7, 2023 terror attacks in Israel by the terrorist organization Hamas who slaughtered more than 1,200 children, women, and men, as well as taking several hundred hostage. And that is the purpose of the weekly walk - to call for the immediate release of the Israelis still held hostage in Gaza by Hamas - to bring attention via a peaceful protest gathering.

Soliman, a father of five, entered the United States in August 2022 on a B-2 visa that expired more than two years ago, according to the Department of Homeland Security, making Soliman illegally in the United States. Soliman is a product of the Joe Biden open borders policy, but having overstayed his visa, is automatically deportable. Authorities picked up Soliman’s wife and five children on Tuesday, June 3. The Solimans are not United States citizens. Born in Egypt, Soliman lived for 17 years in Kuwait prior to moving to Colorado three years ago. While he apparently has no prior criminal record in the United States, Soliman faces both federal and state charges, including 16 counts of attempted murder in the first degree. Other charges Soliman faces are the federal charge of a hate crime which could get him life in prison for that alone, in addition to six counts of first degree assault, two counts of use of an incendiary device, 16 counts of attempted use of an incendiary device - the 16 additional, unused Molotov Cocktails, and one count of crimes against at-risk adults - the elderly. All told, Soliman is looking at a maximum of 264 years in prison. He deserves each and every one of those 264 years. Soliman plotted for a year, waiting until his daughter graduated from school. He admitted to authorities he has no regrets, and would do this all over again as his goal is see all Zionists dead.

The “federal hate crimes charges [were] already filed, and [he] will be accountable to the fullest extent of the law,” said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt during her Tuesday June 3 presser. “And to Jewish Americans at home, across the country, this president has your back,” said Leavitt.

Part of the celebration of Shavuot includes the reading of the 10 Commandments from the Torah, which of course includes thou shalt not murder. The 16 victims of attempted murder by Soliman range in ages from 52 to 88 - the 88 year old, a Holocaust survivor. Leo Terrell, in charge of the antisemitism task force with the Justice Department, referred to the unnamed 88 year old Holocaust survivor as one who “endured the worst evil in human history,” and “came to America seeking safety. Now decades later, she’s victimized again.”

“The attack on this survivor reminds me of the horror of October 7, when Holocaust survivors were murdered and dragged away by Hamas terrorists in Israel. But this time, it happened here. In our country. This is all caused by the same type of hatred - antisemitism. Holocaust survivors should not spend the final chapter of their lives experiencing or witnessing this hatred again. We must fight this terror together,” said Terrell.

These antisemitic attacks, domestic terrorism, have become normalized in the United States in ways never experienced before in this country. A major reason for this normalization is the absolutely shocking degree of antisemitism that has plagued American college campuses, especially since the October 7 terror attacks by Hamas in Israel. The  level of indoctrination on myriad campuses by even more professors, who have lost their objectivity, if they ever had any to begin with, is stunning. Students being taught lies about Israel, lies about Jews, lies about history, which can, and have been refuted. Yet this oppressor-oppressed mindset, a black and white distinction that because Israel has achieved a level of success, they must automatically be the oppressor, and the Hamas-led Gazans must be the oppressed because their fortunes have not been as bright.

Israel, which has been the ancestral, Biblical, historical, and religious homeland of the Jewish people long before its current naming in 1948. False accusations of Israel as a colonizing state, as an apartheid state, as a genocide state are patently false and proveably so. But people haven’t learned history and want to punish Israel for its success. Israel doesn’t start wars - it serves no purpose for them to do so. For Israel to lose a war is to witness the eradication of Israel, the lone Jewish nation on the planet. Israel is in a constant struggle simply to survive as it gets attacked and invaded from every direction, and from any number of enemies. There are 57 Arab and/or Muslim nations, and while they are not all at war with Israel, none of them have been willing to absorb the so-called refugees - a status so-called Palestinians have claimed since the political founding of Israel in 1948.

Israel did not run its Arab/Muslim neighbors into exile in 1948, yet hundreds of thousands chose to flee Israel, start perpetual wars against Israel and claim that very land - the land that is the lone Jewish nation - barely the size of New Jersey to be their own. History proves otherwise. The Jewish people, the Israelites, the ancient Hebrews, have existed 5,785 years, Christians just under 2,000 years, and Muslims about 1,415 years. Since 1948 the Jewish populations from the collective Arab/Muslim lands faded dramatically from around 900,000 to under 30,000 due to pogroms, exiles, and those who moved to Israel (made aliyah). Arabs/Muslims in Israel have grown in numbers precipitously, live freely and equally with more rights and freedoms than they would enjoy in their “own” 57 states. 

Those who have continued to claim so-called refugee status have suffered due to their own unwillingness, their own stubbornness, to accept any number of peace overtures from Israel - the so-called Two State Solution. These so-called refugees live under the tyrannical fists of terrorist organizations Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis - all funded by the Islamic Republic of Iran, the world’s largest state sponsor of terror. The terrorist organizations have written into their charters calling for the evisceration of Israel and the slaughter of the Jewish people. The Islamic Republic of Iran, since their 1978-79 revolution, has made it their dual goal to destroy the United States, who it calls the Great Satan, and Israel, the Little Satan. The Islamic Republic of Iran is the closest it has ever been to possessing the weaponry to attempt just that.

Yet, it is the bastardization of the truth, the actual history, the demonization of Israel and the United States from within the United States on the myriad college campuses where indoctrination, false narratives, misinformation, and outright lies perpetrated by professors and leaders of campus organizations are peddled. And not cheaply, when considering the cost of a college education these days and the value one gets for that cost of tuition. Students leave such institutions ill-prepared for the real world with their gender studies, philosophy, and even journalism degrees because of the erroneous lessons they have learned. It is on these campuses where the students are indoctrinated into learning what to think, not how to think. What to write, not how to write. 

It is this disservice that has promulgated the continuing rise in antisemitism and the criminal behavior accompanying it. In addition to the antisemitic terrorist attacks in Boulder, less than two weeks prior, in the nation’s capital - Washington, DC, on May 21, a radicalized Elias Rodriguez, 30, from Chicago, assassinated Yaron Lischinsky, 30, and Sarah Lynn Milgrim, 26, outside the Capital Jewish Museum. The two, soon to be engaged, staffers at the Israeli Embassy attended a Young Diplomats Reception hosted by the American Jewish Committee. Rodriguez also shouted “Free, free, Palestine,” then pulled out a keffiyeh and admitted to witnesses in the museum, “I did it. I did it for Gaza,” thus became the clarion call for global intifada.

“For these neo-nazis, ‘Free Palestine,’ is just today’s version of ‘Heil Hitler.’ They don’t want a Palestinian state, they want to destroy the Jewish state. They want to annihilate the Jewish people who have been in the land of Israel for 3,500 years,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

This recent spate of antisemitism includes a Dearborn, Michigan man who pled guilty to federal gun charges on May 28, after allegedly threatening pre-school children and their parents outside a Bloomfield Hills synagogue. Hassan Chokr, 35, plotted to slaughter pre-school children at Temple Beth El in Bloomfield Hills, drove through the parking lot shouting antisemitic slogans and threats as parents dropped children off at the synagogue back in December 2022, according to the New York Post. Chokr’s Instagram posts included convoluted thoughts such as: “your Jew tactics will only backfire on you, you have no place on this earth, Jew (expletive), Jew mother (expletive). A storm is coming to wipe you all out of our lives,” prosecutors testified. To protest his arrest, Chokr dropped his pants, exposing his bottom to the judge at a court appearance. He faces 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

It’s Chokr’s last sentence that is the most alarming. “A storm is coming to wipe you all out of our lives,” screams global intifada. And certainly the startling massive increase in antisemitism speaks to that. An audit conducted by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) indicated 9,534 antisemitic incidents took place in 2024 - the highest total in 46 years, and five percent greater than the 2023 figure. Over the past five years antisemitic incidents have risen by 344 percent, and by 893 percent over the last 10 years. These numbers are both daunting and disturbing. What’s more disturbing is that these are not just numbers. They represent people who have been assaulted or murdered because they were Jewish. They represent synagogues, day schools, as well as businesses and private homes owned by Jewish people.

What is not represented in those figures, and occurred just five weeks prior to the Washington, DC assassination, on Sunday April 13, is the arson fire at the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion and official residence. Cody Balmer, 38, of Penbrook, Pennsylvania, broke windows and threw homemade Molotov Cocktails into the banquet hall of the mansion a couple hours after the first night of Passover. No one suffered injuries, as Governor Josh Shapiro (D) and his family slept safely ensconced in various bedrooms of the mansion. Yet, just hours prior, Shapiro hosted a Passover Seder attended by about two dozen people. Balmer himself called 9-1-1 and turned himself in. “I’m not hiding, and I will confess to everything that I had done,” said Balmer. Once in police custody Balmer also admitted he would have attacked the governor with a hammer, if he happened upon Shapiro. Balmer faces eight charges, including attempted murder, terrorism, and aggravated arson, according to ABC News. Attacking the residence of the Jewish governor on the first night of Passover is certainly an act of antisemitism, confirmed when Balmer said he committed his acts in support of Palestine. How that helps Palestine remains a mystery.

These crimes of terrorism and antisemitism in the name of Palestine accomplish nothing productive or positive. They do, however, create a culture of fear, and thinking of the oft-heard threats of global intifada should be taken seriously. When someone tells you they want to kill you, take them at their word.

Certainly US Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) is taking these crimes and threats seriously. “I’m not just a congressman, I’m a Jewish congressman, and I’ve got two Jewish sons. We have to live in this world and people are scared - Jews are scared. Eighty years ago Jews were being burned in Nazi Germany - today they are being burned in the United States, so we have got to be willing to do what is necessary to deal with this, and frankly it starts by recognizing that the call for “Free Palestine,” is a call for violence. And we in this country after 18 months of this have to say enough,” said Fine.

Apparently enough includes the “Run for Their Lives” group announcing it will resume its events and activities next week. They will not let antisemitism win. That is absolutely the right thing to do, and the right message to send. It’s not hyperbolic to suggest Jews around the United States feel as though they are living in 1935 Germany. The difference is, while the Nazis forced Jews to wear an identifying yellow Star of David, Jews in America should proudly don their Stars of David.

Jewish Americans cannot give up on the United States as either a safe haven for religious freedom or as a place to thrive as has been the case for as long as America has been America. We must be more openly Jewish, be more observant as religious Jews, be more supportive of Jewish groups and organizations that support Israel, be more supportive of political candidates who support Israel and Jewish values as American values, and be more vigilant in fighting antisemitism. The antisemites will not chase us from the United States of America. Their antisemitism can’t be hidden, nor will we as proud Jews and proud Americans.

Sanford D. Horn is a writer and educator living in Westfield, IN.