Meet Melat Hamas Kiros

This candidate, who defeated the very good US Representative for the First District of Colorado, Diana DeGette, reminds me of the Coasters' "Yakety Yak". ("Take out the papers and the trash...") I'm not a fan of tweets which specify "only some accounts can reply" but it should be ignored, even though Democrats (D) must be elected everywhere possible.

This one makes me feel sad. I hate the suggestion at the end that we “can't keep Jews in Denver safe while Israel is executing a genocide.” I’ve got Jewish kids here in Denver. The safety of everyone in this city is an imperative, no matter what’s happening around the world. I appreciate that Melat acknowledges that the Boulder firebomber was “trying to incite terror in the Jewish community.” That makes it antisemitic. Jewish safety means the safety of all Jews, whether or not we talk about Israel/Palestine exactly the way someone wants us to. Look, we can be loud critics of Israel. I am. We can argue hard about US policy. We really have to. But the safety of our kids shouldn’t be part of that debate.

— David Seligman (@daveyseligman) October 19, 2026

To confirm that this was not taken out of context, here is the full segment of the interview conducted earlier this month by Politico with House candidates Avila Chevalier and Neelat Karos:

Dasha Burns: Look, you know, I bring up all of these points not to like relitigate the past, but um, to explore this idea that like a lot of your critics look at your comments as a whole and say that your support for the rights of Palestinians has breached into antisemitic territory. Do you understand, Melat, why some people might hear it that way, and is any of that criticism fair? I mean, I’m look...thinking back also so, you know, your reluctance to call the attack on October 7th hostage support demonstration in Boulder um, not calling it antisemitic, right? Do you understand why the aggregation of the stuff that we’ve talked about might make people feel this way? 

Melat Kiros: I do, and I think that is a product of, you know, what I have made abundantly clear that I’m against, which is ethnocracy. When you have created a state around, you know, one particular group, you are welcoming this you know...any kind of criticism against the state being erroneously applied to the entire people, which is wrong. And I have condemned that at every juncture that I have the opportunity to. What we’re talking about is the actions of a state and a government that we are against deeply and their violation of basic human rights of the way they are carrying out apartheid and now genocide on the Palestinian people. What happened in Boulder was a horrific, horrific attack that specifically put Jewish communities in more danger and really... 

Dasha Burns: Was it an antisemitic attack? 

Melat Kiros: ...invited more harm. I think it was a political attack, and I think it was one that specifically puts Jewish people in harm’s way because Israel portends to speak for and act on behalf of all Jewish people, which is not... 

Dasha Burns: But I’m just curious why...why not... 

Melat Kiros: ...the case. 

Dasha Burns: ...call it antisemitic when it was an attack on Jews. 

Melat Kiros: I think whether it was antisemitic or anti-Zionist, it was a hate crime, and it was a crime to insight terror in the Jewish community. And that is wrong, no matter what. I think it is really important that when we talk about these particular um, you know, attacks, that we are clear about why these attacks are happening so that we can actually prevent them from ever happening... 

Dasha Burns: Well, that...that’s... 

Melat Kiros: ...again. 

Dasha Burns: ...but that’s why I’m asking about the antisemitism of it all and why that there’s like a hesitance to call it that. 

Melat Kiros: I think it was a political attack against, you know, the support of Israel specifically. Could it...antisemitism have also been motivated in there? Absolutely. It’s entirely possible. But again, when we are talking about a political attack, we have to go back to the...the root cause of why this violence is happening at all. I want to end the violence so that Jewish people, no matter where they are, but especially to the Jewish neighbors that I have in my district, the Jewish community in my district, that they are safe and that they are protected. And we cannot do that when this state is executing a genocide on the Palestinian people and saying that it is for the safety of Jewish people. There is no liberation where it is not intertwined between you know, all of the people that live in that region, regardless of their faith. And our responsibility is to chart a path forward that recognizes equal rights and equal dignity for every single person and to condemn violence at every single juncture.

In June of 2025 the BBC had reported

An 82-year-old woman who was one of the 12 victims in an attack on a gathering in support of Israeli hostages has died from her injuries in Colorado, officials say.

Karen Diamond was severely injured after the suspect, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, shouting "free Palestine" tossed Molotov cocktails at the group in what federal officials have called a "terrorist attack".

The suspect told police after he was arrested that he wanted to "kill all Zionist people", according to court documents....

Diamond was among the 20 or so people gathered on 1 June to participate in a Run for Their Lives gathering at Pearl Street Mall in Boulder, Colorado, to generate awareness for the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza.

She died as a result of "the severe injuries that she suffered in the attack", the district attorney's office said....

Officials say the suspect planned the attack for a year, watching videos on how to make Molotov cocktails before driving from his home in Colorado Springs to Boulder to carry out the attack.

The suspect allegedly posed as a gardener wearing a construction vest to get close to the group ahead of the attack, prosecutors say.

Near the scene of the crime, officials say they found 16 unlit Molotov cocktails in a plastic container within arm's reach, as well as a weed sprayer filled with petrol.

Kiros does not know whether the act committed by Soliman (who has been prosecuted and sent to prison) was anti-Zionist. You would have thought  that "kill all Zionist people" would have been a clue. She doesn't know whether it was anti-semitic. Maybe the declaration "kill all Zionist people" directed at people who were not supporting the Israeli government but calling for the release of hostages- human beings like the Zionist Karen Diamond- could have been a clue that "Zionist" now is a synonym for "Jew".

The candidate chose not to condemn the attack unequivocally, opting instead to turn the questioning into a diatribe against the imaginary "apartheid and now genocide of the Palestinian people". 

The Israeli government in its bloodlust somehow overlooked the 13 Arabic members of the nation's legislature. Also, the Palestinians in Jordan, where the group comprises roughly half the population. Also, the 31 other nations in which substantial numbers of Palestinians reside; also, in the West Bank, where IDF soldiers are not regularly gunning down residents.  In Gaza,the population, through displacement or killing, ahs declined since the beginning of the war but by something less than 10%, in world history the most incompetent genocide of all.

Kiros is fixated on the "root cause" of "why this violence is happening at all".  The "root cause" is two-fold: hatred of Jews and hatred of the country which has given them safe harbor, and the freedom which no other nation in the Middle East does, and no other nation there ever has. The sense of superiority of Islamists is unsurprising given that

more than 850,000 Jews were forced to leave their homes in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Morocco, and several other Arab countries in the 20 years that followed the Arab-Israeli war of 1948. Another major forced migration took place from Iran in 1979–80, following the Iranian Revolution and the collapse of the shah’s regime, adding 70,000 more Jewish refugees to this number.

There is ample evidence that this conduct against Jews was orchestrated in tandem as a joint effort of all the involved Arab countries.

Kiros remarks "There is no liberation where it is not intertwined between you know, all of the people that live in that region, regardless of their faith."  Regardless of their faith, very few people in the region enjoy the freedom that Jews- or Muslims- do in Israel:

According to the measure of the level of democracy in nations throughout the world published by Freedom House, the Middle Eastern countries with the highest scores are Israel, Tunisia, Turkey, Lebanon, Morocco, Kuwait, and Jordan. The remaining countries of the Middle East are categorized as authoritarian regimes, though some have  certain democratic aspects.

Freedom House categorizes Israel and Tunisia as the only “free” countries of the region....

Lebanon, Turkey, Kuwait, Morocco, and Jordan are all categorized as “partly free"... 

None of the Middle Eastern countries received the “free” status from the Freedom House in their 2016 Freedom of the Press report, which measures specifically the level of freedom and editorial independence enjoyed by the press. Israel, Lebanon, Turkey, and Kuwait were determined “partly free” while all the other countries in the region received the “not free” status.

All the remaining Middle Eastern states are currently determined to be “not free” (including Western Sahara, which is controlled by Morocco).

This is an old report. Sadly, things have not changed much for the peoples, mostly Muslim, of the Middle East. In thirty countries, the head of state must belong to a specific religion. In two of the, he/she must be Christian; in two, Buddhist; and in 17 nations, he or she must be Muslim. Jewish? None. Quite the "ethnocracy:.

Yet Kiros doesn't care. Only the ill-defined "Palestinians" matter and for them, the candidate has no answer, only accusations against Israel.

The disconnect is unfathomable. The terrorist attack was a "hate crime" but possibly not anti-Semitic, which begs the question of whom the "hate" was directed against. This is a problem of the far, far left: simultaneously being equivocal about a murderous crime while being sure to label it a "hate" crime because the label "hate crime" will be the cool thing in Woke 2 as it was in Woke 1. 

Responding at the time to Soliman's attack, District Attorney Michael Dougherty stated "This horrific attack has now claimed the life of an innocent person who was beloved by her family and friends. Our hearts are with the Diamond family during this incredibly difficult time." The hearts of decent people were, but for Kiros and other members of the Democratic Socialists of America, not so much.

In the runoff in the 1991 gubernatorial election in Louisiana, Democrat Edwin Edwards, who had been indicted on criminal charges for which he was acquitted, faced former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and Republican David Duke. (Edwards later was prosecuted for other charges, found guilty, and sentenced to prison.) Some motorists wisely sported the bumper stickers "Vote for the Lizard, not the Wizard" and "Vote for the Crook, It's Important". 

It's critical that Democrats regain control of the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.  Unfortunately, in the 1st congressional district of Colorado, we're left with "Vote for the Bigot: It's Important".

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