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.

  • harmsy@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    19
    ·
    20 hours ago

    Bro, you’re not going to stop a genocide by busting a cap in two nobodies half a world away.

  • HighFructoseLowStand@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    9
    ·
    19 hours ago

    This guy shot people coming out of the Capital Jewish Museum.

    He had no way of knowing who they were.

    He didn’t kill them for working for Israel.

    He killed them for being Jews.

  • BigBenis@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    24
    ·
    edit-2
    1 day ago

    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.

    • iAvicenna@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      edit-2
      9 hours ago

      not really random, this guy seems on par with the Israelis watching Gaza bombings from a cliff while eating popcorn. He also seems to have a full hard on for Trump, so for him all kinds of humanitarian crimes are probably ok as long as the president supports Israeli genocide. So not really random, perhaps more on the same level as Luigi.

    • TheDoozer@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      15
      ·
      21 hours ago

      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.

  • andybytes@programming.dev
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    9
    ·
    23 hours ago

    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.

  • Milk_Sheikh@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    41
    ·
    1 day ago

    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”.

    • TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      33
      ·
      1 day ago

      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.

      • Milk_Sheikh@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        19
        ·
        1 day ago

        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.

      • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        11 hours ago

        Really, guy? You’re removing opinions as “misinformation” to protect a genocidal nation’s dignity?

  • Machinist@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    12
    ·
    1 day ago

    Well, fuck. This moron didn’t help the Palestinians one bit. Just reinforces propaganda about opposition to the genocide being antisemitic.

  • glimse@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    81
    ·
    2 days ago

    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.

  • njm1314@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    24 hours ago

    It’s rather interesting that I haven’t seen anyone mention that this guy who was shot was almost certainly a spy.

  • Godric@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    15
    ·
    1 day ago

    ITT: People fine with innocents being murdered because of their ethnicity.

    Fucking hypocrites.

    • wpb@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      edit-2
      1 day ago

      The guy was killed because he was a German Christian? That’s crazy, I could’ve sworn the killing had something to do with him working for Israel or something, and because Israel is committing a genocide. But if you say he was killed because he was a German Christian, I’m not one to argue with that.

        • wpb@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          19 hours ago

          Did I say that? I’m just expressing my surprise at the fact that this guy was killed for his ethnicity, which, again, is German Christian. Never knew folks had so much flak for German Christians. Weird that the killer would yell “free free Palestine” right after killing a guy for being a German Christian, but I guess he just felt like yelling that, an it’s wrong to assume him yelling that had anything to do with his motivations for the murder.

    • Optional@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      12
      ·
      1 day ago

      Do explain how they facilitated a genocide.

      Or STFU. Seriously. Explain why you think they deserved to be murdered in the US in front of a museum for having worked at the embassy. Seekrit MOSSAD maybe? Did they know (((others))) in the banking halls of power and the media and were plotting with them?? You have the answers, obviously, do share them. Or admit you don’t.

        • Optional@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          9
          ·
          1 day ago

          So anyone working for a part of the state is responsible for the actions of that state?

          The undersecretary of Education is responsible for splitting up mothers and children at the border in 2017?

          That’s the same reasoning. Show that it is not, if you can.

          • xenomor@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            6
            ·
            1 day ago

            I don’t think it’s a binary. Culpability is relative to one’s role and actions. The severity of state action is also a factor and as that severity increases, culpability expands. I want to be explicit, I hate violence and I wish this had not happened. That being said, such violence is an inevitable consequence of circumstances like what the State of Israel and the US are orchestrating. To quote JFK:

            “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

            • Optional@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              1 day ago

              Culpability is relative to one’s role and actions.

              You stated that these two murder victems “facilitated a genocide”. Then you explained that that was because they worked for the state of Israel.

              Now their presumed culpability is relative to their role and actions, which brings us back to the very first question - what were their roles and actions that made them culpable for the genocide in Palestine?

              • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                2
                ·
                1 day ago

                The embassy exists to maintain international support and cooperation in all areas.

                Like I’m iffy on all this, I’m smelling some potential antisemitism with the location and everything. But the Israeli embassy to the United states is not bloodless. Their purpose is to maintain positive relations with their largest supplier of arms and armaments. That’s not the only reason they exist, it’s probably not the majority of their interactions. I’m sure they do plenty of good, but it’s one of the goals of their diplomacy. The Israeli embassy to Kenya is far less complicit.

                • Optional@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  4
                  ·
                  1 day ago

                  Mr. Lischinsky specialized in Japanese studies and was an outstanding student, according to Professor Otmazgin. “He was an idealist,” he said. “He wanted to build bridges between Israel and other countries, especially in Asia.”

                  He grew up in a culturally mixed family with a Jewish father and a Christian mother, and was a practicing Christian, according to Ronen Shoval, the dean of the Argaman Institute for Advanced Studies in Jerusalem, where Mr. Lischinsky participated in a yearlong program in classical liberal conservative thought after earning a master’s degree in government and diplomacy.

                  “He was a devout Christian,” Dr. Shoval said, “but he had tied his fate to the people of Israel.”

                  In his application to join the program, which Dr. Shoval shared with The New York Times, Mr. Lischinsky described his upbringing in a multicultural family and “the inner struggles” he faced while growing up in a religious household within secular societies in Germany and Israel.

                  Hanan Lischinsky said his brother had been considering applying to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ cadet course to train to be a diplomat. People who worked with Mr. Lischinsky in the embassy said that there, he identified as Jewish.

                  . . . Ms. Milgrim had lived abroad in several places, including in Costa Rica, where she spent time working on a master’s degree program, eventually earning master’s degrees in international affairs and in natural resources and sustainable development.

                  Like many young Jewish Americans, she and her brother, Jacob, 28, also participated in Birthright Israel, which offers free trips to Israel in an effort to bolster Jewish identity. In Israel, she worked for an organization that connected young Israelis and Palestinians, her father said.

                  . . . Mr. Milgrim said that his daughter and Mr. Lischinsky were both concerned about peace in the Middle East, the stability of Israel and the plight of Palestinians.

                  “She was doing what she loved, she was doing good,” her father said. Doing good, he added, is “what brought her life to an end.”

                  archive

            • Optional@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              5
              ·
              1 day ago

              To the earlier example of the undersecretary of education; they are enabling family separation at the border?

              Is it not that complicated?