Police said a suspect was in custody after the shooting near the Capital Jewish Museum
A suspect is in custody after shooting dead two Israeli embassy staff outside a Jewish museum in Washington on Wednesday night.
The gunman, named by police as Elias Rodriguez, 30, of Chicago, approached a group of four people leaving an event at the Capital Jewish Museum and opened fire, killing Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim.
Metropolitan police chief Pamela Smith said the shooter had been pacing outside the museum, which is steps away from the FBI’s field office, before the shooting.
After killing the pair, who officials said were a couple, he walked inside, where event security detained him. The suspect yelled: “Free, free Palestine,” after he was arrested, police said.
These are just two souls. What about all the death they caused? Good riddance.
The way I heard someone put it is “these are two more of the thousands of tragic deaths caused by Israel’s genocide in Palestine”
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The man who got shot had an active Twitter account. Very stand-up guy. Such a shame he got killed.
And thank you president Trump for speaking out for the man who has always had your back. 🫡
While any loss of life should be saddening, this dude REEEEALLY makes it hard to be empathetic.
Bro, you’re not going to stop a genocide by busting a cap in two nobodies half a world away.
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Not to disagree with the claim, but it’s important to incidentally point out that historically speaking, this kind of strategy is ineffective, at least without an organised mass movement to resist the reactionary clampdown. It’s not sustainable. If it were, the US would have solved their healthcare problem already.
Are you implying anyone thought it would?
That’s a what globalize the intifada means in practice.
I don’t see how “globalize the intifada” jumps over to adventurist shootings. In practice, it means actions like writing off weapons factories (e.g. Palestine Action in the UK), strike and blockade actions (e.g. maritime unions, port actions), pressuring governments and organisations into withdrawing support for the zionist regime (e.g. boycotts, BDS movement, university protests) and other mass movement. We saw similar mobilisation with apartheid South Africa and the Vietnam War, so this isn’t some imaginary claim, it’s based on actual history of similar international solidarity movements.
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What I found pretty unsettling when I watched some excerpts from the news was the stark contrast in how the events are portrayed depending on who’s getting murdered. Let me explain:
The media and officials insisted on humanizing the victim; notably mentioning the crushed family life he was building for himself (“He bought the ring and was engaged”).
The problem is that the Palestinian children and families getting crushed in a genocide don’t have the privilege to be treated as human, to be cared about or their dreams and aspiration considered. They are at best unfortunate victims and most of the time walking flesh that needs to be exterminated.
I find that so frustrating how the right or even the mainstream always portray themselves as the superior moral culture while enabling the worse mass extermination to happen, documented before them.
EDIT: they even talked about a “heinous” crime which felt so tone-deaf and laughable.
Philosophy Tube has a great video about this topic https://youtu.be/rLfzO7Sbdc4. At 27:20 she starts talking about who’s life is worth grieving and who’s is not, and how this is a government level topic. It hits the nail on the head about the differences in reporting two different people’s deaths can have. At 33:45 they specifically talk about the 2008 Gaza war.
The reason the Palestinian victims haven’t been humanized is that so many of them are children who haven’t even had a chance to grow into their lives yet.
Wonder how many American “pro-lifers” are ok with this genocide
Every. Single. One. Those kids are kids, not fetuses; alive, with hopes and dreams. In other words, completely fucking useless to the “pro life” people.
Do you mean a lot of victims are babies so people can’t relate and sympathize? Because for a child, there are so much dreams, emotions, formative experiences; how can the public hostile to the Palestinian cause close their eyes on that ?
People getting killed in a warzone is different than political murders.
It’s not about who, it’s about context.
News reporting is also about new and unexpected events.
Consider this: People being killed in Sudan or Myanmar gets no attention compared to Gaza.
lol. Describes Gaza as “people getting killed in a warzone”, then has the lack of self-awareness to preach about context.
You sound like an Israeli shill, mate. Dumbing down the language and trying to change the focus to another atrocity.
Gaza isn’t “people getting killed in a warzone”, it’s civilians and children getting bombed in their beds/hospitals/schools/refugee camps and currently being starved to death in the dark by an oppressive fascist regime.
Heartbreaking to see, but sadly it was only a matter of time until something like this happened. This war on Gaza is growing increasingly unpopular and people feel powerless to stop the ongoing genocide being conducted by Israel. I don’t support attacks against random civilians but I’m not surprised somebody saw an opportunity to make a statement. These deaths are on Netanyahu along with the tens-of-thousands of Palestinians killed since the war started.
It doesn’t look like this was an “attack on random civilians.” Out of all the people they could have killed, they killed people who work for the Israeli Embassy. They worked for the government doing the genocide.
Now did they support it? Who knows, but this shooter was not shooting up a movie theater. It was no more random than the United Healthcare CEO.
These deaths are also on the people who demand to globalize the intifada.
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Do you think these murders help Palestinians?
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During the last month, I have introduced real life Israelis and Palestinians to each other. I have helped two Palestinians deal with German bureaucracy.
That’s the most recent stuff. A complete list would take too long to write down.
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“Any attack against a Zionist is antisemitic”
So that means Isreal is a ethnostate?
A genocidal apartheid ethno state.
You forgot colonial
I left out a lot of choice words because the powers that be on most sites take offense when you call a spade a spade, or when you compare said spade to spades that plagued the world during the 1930’s and 40’s.
It was a networking event for Jewish people at a Jewish museum.
And they were two Zionists.
So, there’s a lot of things happening in Gaza other than what’s on the nose. Like starvation can cause neurological issues in the brain, in the body. It can even make your hair turn gray. All the stress. During World War I, soldiers came back with a thing called shell shock, and they would just constantly shake all the time. The kids in Gaza are showing symptoms of shell shock. So I could care less about two people getting killed.
Genuinely awful for these two and their families, but the same can be said for ~53,000 dead Palestinians and the rest who are actively starving to death in a Israeli-made famine while aid rots onboard trucks across the border. Both acts are deliberate, and both were avoidable.
And while they were both working for the current extremists in power atm via the diplomatic service, they were a lot more moderate too:
Lischinsky “I’m an ardent believer in the vision that was outlined in the Abraham Accords and believe that expanding the circle of peace with our Arab neighbours and pursuing regional cooperation is in the best interest of the state of Israel and the Middle East as a whole. To this end, I advocate for interfaith dialogue and intercultural understanding.”
Milgrim organised visits and missions to Israel. She was also a volunteer at Tech2Peace, an advocacy group training young Palestinians and Israelis and promoting dialogue between them.
Tech2Peace said Milgrim was an active volunteer who “brought people together with empathy and purpose”.
I mean also…
“In his final post on social media hours before the attack, Lischinsky had shared a post from the Israeli ambassador, Amir Weissbrod, accusing UN officials of engaging in “blood libel” over claims that 14,000 children faced starvation in Gaza.”
Not saying they deserved any violence, but even once moderate Israelis have been driven pretty far right in the last couple years. Accusations of blood libel while the state is actively starving children doesn’t exactly seem to be promoting any positive dialogue.
The context is important. A UN official said 14,000 children would die in 48 hours. As it turns out that was a grossly exaggerated claim.
a report from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) which stated 14,100 severe cases of acute malnutrition are expected to occur among children aged six to 59 months between April 2025 and March 2026.
The IPC report says this could take place over the course of about a year - not 48 hours
Weissbrod called that out.
I don’t think I would really consider it a grossly exaggerated claim, more of just a misinterpretation of a report.
“For now let me just say that we know for a fact that there are babies who are in urgent life-saving need of these supplements that need to come in because their mothers are unable to feed themselves.”
“And if they do not get those, they will be in mortal danger,” he said.
I definitely wouldn’t claim that it was a claim based on antisemitism as Weissbrod is accusing. It’s a fact that the Israeli state is starving tens of thousands of people for no justifiable reason. I don’t think a misinterpretation of the timeline is really enough to claim someone is participating in blood libel.
Yeeeesh, hadn’t seen that reporting…
It’s unbelievably disappointing to see over and over again that Israelis are broadly okay with the death and destruction in Gaza, when a little over a generation ago they were on the cusp of a genuine two-state solution. And now it’s an ethnostate that practices apartheid, and it’s okay because “Bibi keeps us safe”. Almost as if nothing else matters.
It was always an Apartheid state - their own laws from the very start separate Israeli Citizenship from Israeli Nationality, with only Jews being allowed to have the last (in addition to the former) which has additional rights over mere Citizenship - and it had a Genocide already pretty near the time of its formation called the Nakba, only that was “just” displacement and a few murders rather than mass murdering hundreds of thousands of people.
It’s just that for a while their Propaganda was very successful and they might have even be genuinelly considering merelly not taking over the rest of Palestine as giving back that which they had already stolen was never on the table, nor was the return of the Palestinians or a genuinelly equal society for both Jews and Non-Jews.
Israel was always shit since it’s formation (which by the way involved them commiting terrorist attacks), it’s just that now they’ve gone extreme Genocidal on their way to commiting a XXI Century version of the Holocaust.
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Really, guy? You’re removing opinions as “misinformation” to protect a genocidal nation’s dignity?
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Genuinely awful for these two and their families
Yeah.
Genuinely awful for these two and their families, but
Stop. It’s awful. Period!
Israel is doing worse by a long shot.
A) One lone gunman goes off the rails and murders two people because they’re Jewish/affiliated with the state. That’s tragic and wrong, and I haven’t yet seen anyone claim that his actions were good and right.
B) An entire government and military decides that their course of action shall be wanton bombing with callous disregard for innocent civilian bystanders, whilst deliberately restricting food, fuel, and medical care to a blockaded nation. That’s willful evil, that is being either openly or implicitly supported by an overwhelming majority of Israelis.
The two scenarios are not the same, but they both are tragic.
But if two people are killed, you don’t have to say: “Well, but what about…”
Yes, you’re right, the two events are entirely unrelated. Clearly just another case of anti-semitism out of nowhere. No possible other reason or context exists as to why the gunman was shouting “Free Palestine” as he was arrested after committing double murder.
Whatabboutism is when you deflect from one action perpetrated by your group, towards another action perpetrated by an out-group. Me expressing remorse for their deaths alongside the people their government murdered is not “Well what about…”
Clearly just another case of anti-semitism out of nowhere
I never said that and you don’t have to put words in my mouth. Rest here, that’s all I wanted to say.
E: Putting words im mouths by the way doesn’t really help people to change their mind or discuss constructively, what I tried to do.
You’re not going to change your mind.
I mean context is always important. Pretty sure any murder investigation goes into the motivation of the person who killed the victims.
I think it’s important to dispel the notion that the occupation of a neighboring country is somehow an act of protection, when it’s pretty obvious that it’s sparked a lot of provocation.
But they didn’t just pointed out the context. They said: “Genuinely awful for these two and their families, but the same can be said for ~53,000 dead Palestinians […]”. That wording tends to whataboutism which is something I just want to point out. I may be overreacting but this sentence just sounds very adverse.
You aren’t over reacting. It’s a massive false equivalence comparing what Israel has done against the murder of two individuals. The guy that got murdered isn’t Israel. He’s a person with opinions, right or wrong. He got murdered for a few tweets and an affiliation with Israel. He’s not a combatant, but a civilian. Same for his wife. People justifying these murders are flat out wrong, and there’s no place in America for ideological murders. In order to have a system where free speech is protected, you can’t allow people to be murdered for their views. There is no defending these murders or trying to justify them.
I mean, I don’t think you get to decide what the scope of the context is.
For this not to be contextual you would have to claim that the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians had nothing to do with the gunman’s motive. I think that would be hard to claim considering that the murders were politically motivated, considering that the two victims were diplomats.
I think people have gotten a little too comfortable with claiming anything that shares a sentence structure with a logical fallacy to be a logical fallacy. You have to remember that logical fallacies have to be illogical in the first place. It’s not illogical to assume these two claims are associated.
Whataboutism have to equivocate two different scenarios that aren’t logically associated with the events in the originating claim.
Why are we like this online? Why does the inbox regularly receive with “well ahktually” replies compared to real discussion or comments?
But the same [sympathy towards grieving families] can also be said…
- Not “but tbh they deserve it bc Gaza”
- Not “but I don’t care”
- Not “but this is what they get for working for Israeli state”
Please don’t twist what I said to build a narrative where I’m some crypto-bigot trying to plant hatred. I wish the Israel apologists applied anywhere near that same level of effort towards the people who actually spew antisemitism…
This exact sentiment is why people don’t talk about Israel, but their reputation globally is in the gutter. Or how actual neo-nazis can pass fake Voltaire quotes that ‘Jews control the global media’ because criticism of Israel is verboten:
US congressman shares neo-Nazi’s quote wrongly attributed to Voltaire
CLAIM: French philosopher Voltaire said: “To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.”
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. Enlightenment-era writer Voltaire did not say this. The quote, which was paraphrased, comes from a 1993 radio broadcast by Kevin Alfred Strom, who has been identified as a neo-Nazi by organizations that monitor hate groups.
In a vacuum that makes sense, but this is going to be used to rationalize/justify some nasty shit. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to brace for that.
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Israel is now the primary driver of antisemitism throughout the world.
Technically the genocide is antisemitic, because Palestinians are semitic.
Antisemitism only has ever meant Jew hatred. Semitic is otherwise a linguistic term.
This argument is asinine.
Looking into this, it turns out all the dictionaries indeed seem to say it’s jew specific, which I think is a failing of the English language, because Jews are a drop in the bucket for semitic populations.
I’ll concede your point, despite the word structure literally implying something bigger.
Edit added references
Antisemites have always blamed the Jews for Antisemitism.
They said Israel. You said Jews. You’re aware those are separate entities, yes? Or are you playing pedantic word games on purpose…?
I mean, it’s not like antisemitism needed help, but here we are.
It didn’t need help being proudly adopted by uneducated bigots who believed in space lasers, but it was largely missing the intellectual generally accepting crowd. It sure got 'em now.
Israel makes Jewish people around the world less safe when it claimed it would do the opposite.
Which only benefits Israel. If Jewish people are less safe in their home countries they are incentivized to become Israeli settlers.
It’s like they think they invented imperialism or something.
Odd though that out of 5 people he got two staffers. Seems he was trying to specifically get isreali employees.
I do feel for the innocents who get targetted… on both sides.
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Brain dead comment, these 2 people don’t run the government of Israel and this solves nothing, more over it just makes things worse and probably helps gain some sympathy for iIsrael
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It sucks that more people died. It also sucks that I feel so…indifferent about this one.
How many Israelis have to die before they stop killing Palestinians? What’s two lives compared to the hundreds ended daily in Gaza? It’s hard to be sad.
These people probably weren’t evil. At worst, they were complicit after being fed a lifetime of propaganda. And nothing will change because of this so there’s no silver lining. It’s hard to be happy.
If I feel anything, it’s dread at how the story will be spun. But even then…whatever happens isn’t going to be the worse than what’s already happening.
So it’s hard to care at all. And that’s the sad part for me.
I agree, and i think killing people is wrong. But i would not say victims were not evil.
The government of Israel is evil.
These people worked for the embassy.We can’t condemn people in broad terms. That is what started this. Killing someone because of their nationally, race, or job, is wrong. It’s more senseless killing, adding to the hundreds of Palestinians killed.
Guard yourself against seeing individuals as the enemy, when their only sin is where they were born.
i will disagree here as people in palestine have no choice, they are going to murdered by settlers and have their home of multiple generations taken away no matter what they do. so what alternative they have other than to fight back.
these “delegates” on the other are rich and educated enough to work for anyone other than this disgusting apartheid state of who murder women and children for fun on daily basis. we all know what aipac and israeli lobby does in us to hijack our political system. they are the actual terrorists not gazan fighting for survival without food and water against an enemy that wipes out a family with drone strike for speaking the truth. these “delegates” might not have shot anyone but they certainly ensure that the terrorists who do it get all the funds and weapons they need.
they intentionally murder doctors and medics so injured innocents die horrible death
people like him and luigi are just normal people who are brave enough to do the only thing that is going to make a dent against these well funded parasites.
Killing someone because of their nationally, race, or job, is wrong.
One of these things is not like the others.
They weren’t just born there (and given the number of settlers over there, that’s doubtful tbh). They took a state job representing, and lobbying for this genocide.
It’s a tragedy that it has come to this, but it’s not wrong. It’s wrong that it has to be this way.
Killing is only justified if it saves lives. Anyone can see this act will cost lives on both sides. And 1000x as many on the Palestinian side.
Let’s be real, this guy wanted to be a badass and get praise and attention. And he doesn’t care how many die because of that.
You know not all embassy staff are ambassadors from Israel right?
You can work at an embassy and be a US citizen.
Which one of them was.
That’s even worse then. Not even the excuse of growing up there to fall back on. They chose to work there still.
So you condone the killing of a person because they happen to work somewhere?
Odd take but ok.
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Much of Germany was working for the Third Reich, if you don’t recall from history.
Shooting random staffers doesn’t fight the Third Reich leadership, you just murdered some random people.
If you conveniently forget to mention where it is exactly they happen to work, of course it sounds silly.
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How do you know they were lobbying for genocide? For all we know they were against it and working for a peaceful solution. Not everyone who works for a government is part of the ideology. That’s no better than saying every Democrat is MAGA.
Counter point: how do you know they weren’t…?
You just have to check Lischinsky tweets and retweet oposing a palestinian state because it would be a gift to Khamas
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Ambassadors are appointed. If they were not in favor of the administration they would be recalled and replaced by ones that were.
I suppose, but they weren’t ambassadors. So - that’s wrong.
It is beyond the shadow of a doubt that these people were directly involved in advocating for greater crackdowns on pro-Palestine antigenocide protesting.
Damn, a shadow of a doubt?! Holy shit you must have the motherfucking receipts on these sumbitches, let’s see it! Whatcha got, facebook post? Tiktok? Some sort of cleverly disguised academic treatise?
Yeah you got nothing. GTFO.
These two people lived by the sword.
Oh FFS.
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Maybe they did, which is why they were at an event to discuss delivering more aid to Gaza.
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cy9vr10n732t
These were young idealists trying to make a change. But the shooter didn’t care about the distinction, and it seems many others don’t either.
Most Israelis support Israel which, until a few years ago, was a-ok on account of the previous thousands of years of persecution in every other country in the world, cresting in the unpleasantness of the early-mid 1900s which set quite the bar for evil and horror.
Then Likud - like all republiQan, right-wing authoritarian regimes - seized power and started fucking everything up in incredible, outrageous ways. Americans should be familiar.
I don’t know what they did for the embassy, but it could be something utterly harmless and treating them like enemy combatants when they’re in an entirely different country at a museum is wrong.
I get the hate at the Likud/IDF for the genocide. Y’all are losing the plot by thinking this is ok though. It is very much not okay.
Guard yourself against seeing individuals as the enemy, when their only sin is where they were born.
Kansas City?
Wat?
She was from Kansas City.
That’s exact what I’m trying to say - they didn’t deserve to die and nothing good will come from it.
I will admit I WAS happy about the UHC CEO because he was directly involved in the decisionmaking that led to suffering. But this one doesn’t feel like vengeance - until I hear otherwise, these were just two people caught in the crossfire. Bullets should be flying at Netanyahu and his cronies, not embassy employees.
i know how you feel, it’s just like the thousands of other terrorist acts against Jews over the centuries
I don’t really feel indifferent towards those, though
so you don’t want any more of these murders to happen?
or you’re indifferent about that
Sorry, gloves off
What kind of stupid fucking gotcha do you think you’re trying to catch me in here?
