When the Punishment Fits the Crime

Casey Goonan is a one-man multitude, an all-by-his-lonesome crime wave, a far-left anti-Israel arsonist who has engaged in numerous attacks, targeting police cars, a federal office building, and other symbols of authority, on the campus of Berkeley and in Oakland. And now Mr. Goonan — nomen est omen — has just received the surprise of his life: a punishment actually severe enough to fit the crime. More on this malevolent madman can be found here: “Anti-Israel arsonist Casey Goonan gets 20 years for Berkeley and Oakland firebombings,” by Michael Starr, Jerusalem Post, September 25, 2025:

American anti-Israel activist and serial arsonist Casey Robert Goonan was sentenced to almost 20 years in federal prison on Tuesday for a series of arson and fire bombing attacks at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Oakland federal building in 2024, the California Northern District US Attorney’s Office announced.

The 35-year-old Oakland and Pleasant Hill resident received 235 months in prison and was ordered to pay over $94,000 in restitution after he had pleaded guilty on January 14 to a count of maliciously damaging property by means of fire. Goonan will also serve 15 years of supervised release once he is prison-free.

How does setting fire to a police car on the UC/Berkeley campus have anything to do with the war in Gaza? How do the other four fires Goonan set, including one at the Federal building in Oakland, change anything in the Middle East?

Goonan’s arson spree began the morning of June 1, 2024, when he placed a bag of six Molotov cocktails underneath the fuel tank of a University of California Police Department (UCPD) patrol car parked near the Berkeley campus.Goonan set the bag on fire, causing the vehicle to become engulfed in flames.

Later that day, Goonan set fire to a patch of grass near the Starr East Asian Library in what an anonymous statement shared with the San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center described as “experimental.”
On June 11, Goonan had attempted to firebomb the Ronald V. Dellums Federal and US Courthouse building in Oakland. He threw rocks to break a window in the hopes of throwing three ignited Molotov cocktails inside, but his plan was disrupted by protective service officers.

So Goonan placed the firebombs into a planter instead, which started a fire, then fled.

The arsonist continued his attacks on June 13, throwing a firebomb near Koshland Hall in Berkeley, according to another anonymous manifesto. Goonan did this in retaliation for UCPD’s crackdown on student activists attempting to reestablish an anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian encampment on the campus.

Goodness, Goonan has been quite a busy bee, setting on fire whatever he can — a police car, a federal office building, a construction site as well as throwing firebombs hither and yon. Strange that he forgot to set a fire at Berkeley’s Hillel House. Perhaps he was just getting to that.

A hero to the pro-Palestinian multitude, Casey Goonan has turned out to be a serial lawbreaker in the eyes of the law. Now he’s been given a prison sentence of 20 years. It’s longer than any of us could have expected, or hoped. Such a sentence should scare the pants off his well-wishers who may decide after all that they will choose not to go and do likewise. Justice has been served. As Clemenza says of another character in The Godfather, “Goonan? You won’t see him around no more.” At least not for twenty years.