Melat Kiros, a Democratic Socialist running to unseat Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), said this week that she is unsure if the firebombing attack in Boulder last year, in which Karen Diamond, 82, was killed, was antisemitic.
The lawyer, who has said that Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack was the “inevitable consequence of apartheid,” made the comment in an interview with Kyle Clark, of 9 News, in Denver. Clark framed the question in terms of what he said is a debate in the Democratic Party about what is “antisemitism” and what is “anti-Zionism.”
“That firebombing attack in Boulder on the group of peaceful protesters there that were protesting in support of the Jewish hostages being held by Hamas. Was that firebombing attack on them an act of antisemitism?” Clark asked.
“I don’t know what was in the heart of the perpetrator,” Kiros said. “All I know is that he went and 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.”
Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 46, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole and 2,128 years, the maximum available sentence, after pleading guilty in May to first-degree murder and 100 other charges for throwing Molotov cocktails at people rallying, on behalf of Hamas-held hostages, in Boulder, Colo., on June 1, 2025.
Kiros told Clark of the victims that “in fact, most of them were probably just there to, you know, ask that the people who were kidnapped during Oct. 7 be returned home to their families,” she said. “That’s not a political statement in and of itself.”
“I think the fact that we’re having a conversation about whether it was anti-Zionism or antisemitism is a political debate that, you know, I think everyone has the freedom to have,” she said. “But, to me, it was a loss of innocent life regardless of what the perpetrator had in mind when he took those lives.”
“Matters less to me than you know our responsibility to making sure that people understand that even in the face of these kinds of disagreements that violence is not the answer,” she said.
“You would not describe it as antisemitism?” Clark asked.
“I don’t know,” the candidate said. “I don’t know what his intentions were.”
The Democratic primary in Colorado’s 1st Congressional District is slated for June 30.
As of June 10, DeGette, the incumbent, had raised more than $1.4 million, with nearly $460,000 on hand, and Kiros had raised more than $660,000, with nearly $88,500 on hand, according to Federal Election Commission data.
The Cook Political Report, which called the district solidly, plus-29 Democratic, stated that “after nearly three decades in Congress, 68-year-old Rep. Diana DeGette is on the verge of becoming the top Democrat on the power Energy and Commerce Committee.”
“But she’ll first need to ward off a serious challenge from Melat Kiros, who’s nearly four decades her junior and is backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders and the Democratic Socialists of America,” it said.
A poll by Data for Progress, a left-wing think tank, suggested earlier this month that Kiros leads by five points.
