I’ve been trying to wrap my head around the devastating acts of violence against American Jews in Boulder and DC. I’m sure you have too.

The Boulder attack was an act of cruelty in which the assailant set demonstrators, including the elderly, on fire. In DC it was an act of murder. These were targeted attacks against Jews.

People are furious at Israel for its destruction in Gaza, and this is reasonable. I am too. But being furious at Israel doesn’t cause a reasonable person to wield a Molotov cocktail or a gun on the other side of the world.

I don’t know how you get from point A to point B. It defies any kind of logical sense.

I guess some people have hatred and fury within them, and they will pick the scapegoat of the moment to unleash their violent impulses upon.

The 2025 attacks in Boulder and DC are related to the 2014 Isla Vista killings at the hands of incel Elliot Rodger. They are related to the 2015 shooting at the Charleston, South Carolina AME church at the hands of white supremacist Dylann Roof. These events are all related.

Israel, and Jews by association, happen to be the leading scapegoat of the moment.

Elliot Rodger, Dylann Roof, and Elias Rodriguez, the DC shooter, each wrote a manifesto justifying their actions and then went out and killed women, Black people, and Jews, respectively.

I’ve seen a fair amount of writing contextualizing the DC and Boulder attacks within the contemporary anti-Israel movement, and this is important. The anti-Israel sentiment permeating certain parts of American culture is allowing Jews to become the scapegoat of the moment. But the fact that people seem to need a scapegoat is what troubles me the most.

If I had one note for non-Jewish people who are furious at Israel and indignant on behalf of Palestinians, I would tell them to make sure they are not blaming Jews, including Israeli Jews, for things they are not responsible for. I would encourage these indignant people not to view the Jewish people as a monolith and instead to direct their ire at Netanyahu and his administration.

But, of course, the people I am speaking to are reasonable people. The DC and Boulder assailants are not.