As a Jew in Colorado right now I am still afraid.

Last week after Melat Kiros won the Democratic nomination for Colorado’s 1st Congressional District, I shared my fears on social media and wrote an op-ed on my Times of Israel blog . I expressed what her victory meant to me as a visibly Jewish Coloradan.

Kiros is the candidate who called the slaughter of 1,200 of my brothers and sisters on October 7 “inevitable.” She failed to call our local firebombing an act of antisemitism. In a district as blue as this one, her nomination all but guarantees she will be my next representative in Congress.

I wrote that my fear was not really about her. Politicians can be misguided, and history is full of them. My fear was about the people who heard everything she said, understood exactly what they were endorsing, and voted for her because of it. My neighbors. The person behind me in the checkout line. My doctor. Do they secretly hate me and my People?

Anti-Israel sentiment does not stay neatly contained within the borders of a foreign policy debate. After October 7, the ADL recorded 3,291 antisemitic incidents in just three months, a 361 percent increase over the same period the year before. Here in Colorado, we watched a firebombing on Pearl Street in Boulder take the life of........

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