A pro-Palestinian activist who pleaded guilty to firebombing a police vehicle in Berkeley, California, last year, was sentenced this week to 19 years in federal prison.
Casey Goonan, 35, also admitted to targeting other sites, including the University of California, Berkeley and a federal building in Oakland, with fires and Molotov cocktails in the name of Palestinian liberation. No one was injured in the June 2024 incidents.
In a statement to J, the Jewish News of Northern California, Goonan’s lawyer said they were remorseful for the harm they caused their community. The attorney added that Goonan planned to continue pro-Palestinian activism in prison, saying, “Casey’s case concluded today, but the fight for Palestinian Liberation continues.”
Documents from the case shed light on the identity and background of the activist who took credit for some of the most aggressive instances of violence amid a wave of pro-Palestinian protests last year.
Goonan, who uses they/them pronouns, is a former college athlete who played baseball for three years with Diablo Valley College, a community college in northern California. They then earned a bachelor’s degree in ethnic studies from the University of California, Irvine and, in 2022, a doctorate in African American Studies from Northwestern University, where the student newspaper reported that they were part of the “critical theory program.”
In a statement to the judge, Goonan wrote, “During my time as a student, I was introduced to the cause of Palestinian liberation,” adding that “the genocide in Gaza” had further instilled in them a “profound sense of complicity.”
Goonan said they had several illnesses including bipolar spectrum disorder and had left a psychiatric facility against medical advice before committing the arsons.
They confessed to lighting a homemade bomb under a UC Berkeley campus police vehicle last June and attempting to throw a Molotov cocktail at a federal courthouse.
Goonan also published a pamphlet calling for other pro-Palestinian activists to commit arson and vandalism, in what Goonan deemed “Operation Campus Flood” in a nod to Hamas’s name for its Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that initiated the war in Gaza.
“Knife to the throat of zionism. Death to amerikkka,” the pamphlet read.
Federal prosecutors said in a Department of Justice press release that Goonan’s sentence reflects the violence of their acts, not their ideological orientation.
“Freedom of expression and peaceful protest are deeply enshrined values in America. We are all free to think what we want and express those views peacefully, but the use of violence to achieve political aims — or to silence those with whom you may disagree — has no place in our community and our country,” said U.S. Attorney Craig H. Missakian. “Anyone who crosses the line between peaceful protest and violence will be met with the full force of the law.”
Some activists who have taken aggressive action on behalf of the Palestinians have become causes célèbre for some in the movement. And the J reported that Goonan has maintained some defenders among local activists who fundraised for their legal fees.
But an anonymous essay published earlier this year on a far-left website by allies of Goonan decried the broader pro-Palestinian movement for giving short shrift to Goonan, who the post said was “the only US political prisoner from the 2024 pro-Palestine student encampments.” (The post was written prior to the Trump administration’s efforts to arrest non-citizen student protesters.)
“If the pro-Palestine movement wants to also tote itself as an intifada they should take note of the militant organizing and support infrastructure within and between prison walls that occurs in Palestine,” read the post on Unravel. “Abandonment of prisoners is where revolutionary ideals die.”
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