NBC News on Monday framed the terror attacks in Washington, D.C., and Boulder, Colo., as security failures rather than anti-Semitic hate crimes.
One day after the Boulder attack, NBC headlined an article “Lone Wolf Attacks in Boulder and D.C. Highlight the Difficulties in Securing Public Spaces.” While the network mentioned in a subheading that both instances of terrorism were “hate-fueled attacks on Jewish Americans,” the article focuses not on the rise of anti-Semitism in the United States but rather on supposed lapses in public safety.
Both assailants shouted anti-Semitic slogans, with Colorado attacker Mohamed Soliman even admitting to investigators on Monday that he “wanted to kill all Zionist people” and “would do it again.” D.C. attacker Elias Rodriguez, meanwhile, murdered a couple walking out of a Jewish museum as he shouted, “Free, free Palestine,” and later told police, “I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza.”
The network’s decision to downplay anti-Semitic motives comes as the United States has seen rampant anti-Semitism following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel. President Donald Trump has cracked down on anti-Semitism, revoking visas of foreign nationals linked to anti-Semitic activity and withholding billions in federal funding from universities that fail to protect Jewish students on campus.
NBC is not the only left-leaning news outlet to mischaracterize the Colorado anti-Semitic attack. The New York Times in its initial coverage omitted Soliman’s nationality and illegal status, while MSNBC’s initial coverage inaccurately described him as a “white male.”
Soliman, an illegal immigrant from Egypt, hurled Molotov cocktails and used what the Times called a “makeshift flamethrower” on peaceful Boulder demonstrators, injuring 12 victims, including a Holocaust survivor. Soliman is facing a federal hate crime charge as well as multiple state counts, including attempted murder.
In May, Rodriguez murdered the couple, Israeli embassy staffers Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, who were leaving an event at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. Rodriguez has been charged with several federal felonies, including two counts of first-degree murder.
“We refuse to accept a world in which Jewish Americans are targeted for who they are and what they believe,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said Monday in a statement, while Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon vowed that the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division “will act swiftly and decisively to bring the perpetrators of such crimes to justice.”
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