Boulder city council member refuses to sign statement condemning firebombing, since it doesn’t say ‘anti-Zionist’

A member of the Boulder, Colorado, city council refuses to sign onto a statement condemning the firebombing attack against a rally for Israeli hostages because it calls the attack antisemitic, and not anti-Zionist.

“I could not sign into the joint letter because my request to add the anti-Zionist to the antisemitism attack sentence or the word anywhere in the document was denied,” council member Taishya Adams writes on Facebook.

“I cannot sign a letter that equates the calls for a ‘Free Palestine’ with antisemitism. Without the anti-Zionist part, the reader will fail to understand a key driver of this terrible attack,” she writes. “Also, the perpetrator, whose actions I condemn fully and that resulted in harm to our community members, was explicit about ending Zionism.”

The US city’s statement calls the firebombing a “targeted, antisemitic attack.”

“We cannot – and will not – allow antisemitism to become normalized here,” the statement says.

Adams is the “sister city liaison” between Boulder and the Palestinian West Bank city of Nablus.

A member of the hostages’ advocacy group in Boulder has previously accused Adams of anti-Jewish discrimination, including by blocking the hostages’ group on her official Instagram account.

Before the attack, the Boulder city council was repeatedly disrupted by anti-Israel protests, prompting a Jewish council member to say she felt unsafe at the meetings, according to Boulder Reporting Lab, a local news site.