Special Israel Update: A Heartbreaking Evening
Hostages Held in Gaza: 58; IDF Soldiers Lost: 858
As many of you know by now, two beautiful souls, Sarah Lynn Milgrim, a 26 year-old Jewish American citizen from Kansas, and Yaron Lischinsky, a 30 year-old practicing Christian from Israel, were gunned down by a radicalized domestic terrorist in cold blood last night as they were leaving a Young Diplomats Reception hosted by the American Jewish Committee in Washington, D.C. Even more heartbreaking, it has been reported that Yaron had purchased a ring this week with the intent to propose to Sarah next week in Jerusalem. May the memory of Sarah and Yaron be a blessing. Am Israel Chai.
**A lot of this information is fluid and coming to light in real time, so I tried to share what we know from sources I trust**
Situation Report
At approximately 9:00 p.m. EDT on May 21, 2025, two employees of the Israeli Embassy—Yaron Lischinsky (30, an Israeli-German) and Sarah Lynn Milgrim (26, an American from Kansas) —were fatally shot outside the Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. The couple had just exited a "Young Diplomats Reception" hosted by the American Jewish Committee when the attack occurred.
As the event concluded and participants began exiting the building, Rodriguez pulled out a firearm and opened fire on four people. Lishinsky and Milgrom were killed at the scene. The shooter then threw away his weapon.
Yaron had just bought a ring and was planning on proposing to Sarah next week in Jerusalem.
Aviva Klompas writes: Sarah, who is Jewish, had devoted her life to building bridges — working with Tech2Peace to bring young Israelis and Palestinians together through dialogue and technology. Yaron Lischinsky had a Jewish father and a Christian mother. He was a practicing Christian who chose to tie his fate to the people of Israel. From a young age, he dreamed of becoming an Israeli diplomat — and he was living that dream.
Jewish Insider reports: Eyewitness Paige Siegel, who was a guest at the event, told Jewish Insider that she heard two sets of multiple shots ring out, and then an individual, who police have since identified as suspected shooter Elias Rodriguez, entered the building appearing disoriented and panicked, seconds after the shooting ended. She said security allowed the man in, as well as two other women separately. Siegel said she spoke to the man, asking him if he had been shot. He appeared panicked and was mumbling and repeatedly told bystanders to call the police. Siegel said that she felt the man was suspicious…After Siegel said that, she said the man started screaming, “I did it, I did it. Free Palestine. I did it for Gaza,” and opened a backpack, withdrawing a red Keffiyeh.
The suspect, identified as Elias Rodriguez, a 30-year-old from Chicago, was apprehended at the scene after shouting "Free, free Palestine" and discarding his weapon. According to CBS, “two law enforcement sources told CBS News the shooting appears to have been a targeted attack.
The assassination of a foreign diplomat on American soil is unprecedented in recent decades. The last comparable incident occurred in 1982 when the Turkish Consul General Kemal Arıkan was assassinated by an Armenian nationalist in Los Angeles.
This is what 'globalize the intifada' looks like by Arsen Ostrovsky in The National Post
The brutal reality is that such an act of utter violence was the logical and horrific consequence of a relentless campaign of demonization, disinformation and delegitimization against the Jewish state — led not by fringe extremists alone, but by western governments and institutions.
In recent weeks, we have seen an avalanche of false moral equivalence and political duplicity from the very countries that purport to uphold freedom and justice, and make a show of their supposedly unwavering commitment to combating the scourge of Jew-hatred.
This relentless campaign to isolate, sanction and vilify Israel does not occur in a vacuum. It clearly sends a message. A message that Israeli lives are worth less, that Jewish self-defence is unacceptable and that terrorism against Israelis may not only be tolerated, but tacitly justified.
And this message is being received loud and clear — by violent extremists on the streets of London, Paris, Montreal and now Washington, D.C., by radicalized students chanting genocidal slogans to “free Palestine” and to “globalize the intifada” on western campuses, and yes, by the killer who walked up to Israeli diplomats in Washington and ended their lives in cold blood.
Perhaps when the murderer from Washington and the jihadists from Gaza are shouting the same slogans as leaders from Europe and Canada, it might be time to rethink your policy?
This is certainly not the first time that the dehumanization of Jews has led to violence. But it is perhaps the first time in recent memory that it has been so directly aided and abetted by Israel’s supposed allies.
If the international community truly wishes to honour these two murder victims, it must begin by taking a long, hard look in the mirror.
It must start by ending the incessant double standards and opprobrium applied only to Israel — the sole democracy in the Middle East and the only state expected to fight a war against genocidal terrorists with one hand tied behind its back.
It must include a full-throated condemnation not just of the act of murder, but of the poisonous rhetoric and policy decisions that led to it.
This tragedy should be a wake-up call to every western leader. Appeasement of terror and appeasement of those who hate Israel does not bring peace. It brings more violence, more extremism and more death.
[MUST READ INTEL REPORT] The May 21 Embassy Attack: Indicators of Foreign Influence in U.S.-Based Extremist Networks by The Network Contagion Research Institue (NCRI)
Open-source materials reviewed in the aftermath of yesterday’s double-murder yielded evidence of Rodriguez’ affiliation with two far-left organizations, PSL and the ANSWER Coalition.
Elias Rodriguez has prior affiliations with far-left organizations including the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) and the ANSWER Coalition, two groups that have exhibited a pattern of support for radical and violent agendas.
Rodriguez's online and protest activity reflects alignment with slogans like “Intifada revolution” and “Resistance is Justified,” themes frequently promoted by PSL and ANSWER.
ANSWER operates under the fiscal sponsorship of the Progress Unity Fund (PUF), which has known financial and personnel ties to Roy Neville Singham, a pro-CCP financier based in Shanghai.
PUF also sponsors Pivot to Peace, an organization with a history of CCP-aligned messaging. A Pivot to Peace activist was arrested in 2023 for acting as an unregistered foreign agent for the Chinese government.
Key PSL and ANSWER leaders maintain overlapping roles in organizations within the Singham network, including CODEPINK and The People’s Forum, reinforcing concern about an interconnected, foreign-aligned influence network.
Leaked call detail records from sanctioned Iranian state outlet PressTV show over 200 contacts between PressTV and senior leadership of PSL and ANSWER over a 29-month period.
Though there is no direct evidence these contacts influenced Rodriguez’s actions, the persistent engagement with Iranian propaganda outlets reflects a broader pattern of foreign influence targeting radical U.S. activist circles.
Conclusion: The May 21 murder of Israeli embassy officials in Washington DC appears to have been motivated by the suspected shooter’s political ideology. Though Rodriguez specifically cites “armed demonstration” in solidarity with Gaza as his primary motive, his confirmed ties to the PSL and ANSWER Coalition raise urgent questions about the role these two extreme-left organizations’ may have played in his radicalization and ultimate operationalization.
Link to Full Report: Master PSL/ANSWER/Rodriguez Brief
Gunned-down Israeli Embassy staffer Sarah Milgrim worked on peace-building between Palestinians and Israelis, her grieving father says: ‘That’s the irony’ by Reuven Fenton and Ronny Reyes in the New York Post
The father of the bride-to-be who was killed along with her boyfriend near the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC, said his daughter was working to bring Israeli-Palestinian peace and more aid to Gaza before being gunned down by a suspect who later yelled “Free, free Palestine.”
“Last night, she was attending an affair to figure out how to get more aid into Gaza,” Milgrim told The Post. “The night she was killed, she was trying to help the situation – that’s the irony.”
Milgrim said his daughter was passionate about her work with the embassy and had spent several summers in Israel working with “peace-building groups” to help unite Palestinians and Israelis.
Sarah worked in the Department of Public Diplomacy at the embassy and organized several visits and missions to Israel, according to her LinkedIn page.
She had a master’s degree in international affairs from American University and another for natural resources and sustainable development from the University for Peace.
Prior to her start at the embassy, Sarah worked for Tech2Peace in Tel Aviv conducting research on peace-building initiatives between Israelis and Palestinians.
Milgrim said the killings have left his family completely wrecked, especially after learning that Lischinsky was planning to propose to Sarah next week.
Extinguish the Gaslight Forever by Seth Mandel in Commentary
“Free, free Palestine” were the words shouted last night by the anti-Zionist who was arrested for the murder outside the Capital Jewish Museum of Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky, a young couple who were about to travel to Jerusalem and get engaged to be married. It is the chosen phrase for a great many people, none of whom—not one—envisions a peaceful outcome to this conflict.
What we owe ourselves, as a community, after this monstrous act is to stop playing along with the gaslighting of those forever trying to wipe us off the face of the earth. May we stop saying or hearing the endlessly insulting formulation that “many Jews interpret” various Hamasnik slogans as threats or incitement or justification for violence against innocents. They are not ambiguous. We don’t interpret these slogans at all. We simply hear them.
The reason we don’t have such debates over “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is because there’s nothing to discuss. Contrary to what you might read in mainstream newspapers, there is no disagreement over what it means. Everyone knows what it means—it is a slogan explicitly (the original phrasing, changed to rhyme in English, is “Palestine is Arab”) calling for genocide. It’s true that some people lie about what it means, or might mean. But that’s not the same thing as there being a genuine debate.
So among other lessons from last night’s globalizing of the intifada is this: Extinguish this insipid gaslight forever. Anti-Semitism is the only kind of hatred that Western society encourages to be smuggled in through euphemism. We are the people of the book; let’s stop letting the world fool us into self-delusions. Let’s stop swallowing the postmodern bunk that holds there are no universal truths, only personal truths.
They Came for Peace. Hate Was Waiting Outside. Last night’s gathering at the Capital Jewish Museum in DC was about peace. By Lilia Gaufberg with FDD
My friend Jojo Kalin was one of the organizers, and my friends and I came to support her. Jojo is the kind of person whose presence lights up a room — radiant, generous, and lit from within by a hopefulness that feels contagious. True to form, she stood glowing at the podium as she introduced the evening’s speakers: representatives from the Multifaith Alliance and IsraAID — two organizations doing the hard, often invisible work of bringing aid to civilians in Gaza and elsewhere and imagining a future rooted in compassion and coexistence.
Later, I spoke with Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, who had come to the event out of the same belief that brought us all there: that peace is still possible, and still worth fighting for. I chatted with Yaron in Hebrew and English. I complimented Sarah’s beautiful, warm smile. I left the event a little early, waving at Yaron as I stepped out. My friends stayed behind.
The bitter irony is unbearable. The entire event had, in its deepest spirit, been about freedom — freeing Gaza’s civilians from suffering, from violence, from the brutal grip of Hamas. It had been about dignity. About life.
I don’t have many words today. Only this: Hate has never — and will never — liberate anyone. It only destroys.
The ideology that led a man to kill two people devoted to coexistence is the same one that fuels pro-Hamas rhetoric on college campuses. It’s the same one Hamas itself preaches. And it will only reinforce the prisons, prolong the wars, and murder the very people trying to build a bridge out.
Real freedom isn’t won with slogans or bullets. It’s built — quietly, courageously — by people like Jojo, like Yaron and Sarah, who chose dialogue over division, light over darkness.
Watch
Statement by Prime Minister Netanyahu
Commentary
Statement from the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations
This attack represents a despicable and intolerable assault, not only on Jews and Israelis, but on the very democratic values that underpin American society. That such an act could occur at a Jewish institution in the shadow of our federal law enforcement offices is a sobering reminder of how serious the threat has become—and how urgent the need is for unequivocal moral leadership and action from every level of government.
We are now witnessing the deadly consequences of months of relentless antisemitic incitement—amplified by international organizations and political leaders across the globe—since the horrors of October 7. This is not a debate over policy; it is the mainstreaming of hatred, and its consequences are measured in blood.
The atmosphere in which Jewish Americans are expected to live—on campuses, in city streets, and now at official events—is increasingly saturated with hostility, scapegoating, and fear. That must end.
Mark Dubowitz, CEO at FDD
For years before the Hamas massacre in Israel on October 7, 2023, Americans have been targeted by a foreign influence operation funded and weaponized by Qatar and Iran that promotes radically anti-Israel and antisemitic ideologies. We’ve seen the results of this radicalization campaign on more than 200 campuses, in our schools, in our media, and in the streets of our cities. In that light, the murder of two young Israeli Embassy staffers by a fanatic with a keffiyeh was entirely predictable.”
Eitan Fischberger writes on X: Breaking: @kenklippenstein got hold of the Israeli embassy shooter’s alleged manifesto. I don’t usually share such things—but this is different. It’s irrefutable proof that terrorist disinformation doesn’t just spread online. It spills into the real world—and it kills…
Ken Klippenstein writes in his post of the document: Refusing to confront the content of these texts often creates an information vacuum that is quickly filled by hoax documents, conspiracy theories, or selective leaks from authorities that can distort the facts. I believe that sunlight is the best disinfectant, especially when politics is involved, as the document makes clear is the case here.
StopAntisemitism writes on X: What we know so far about Elias Rodriguez, the shooter who murdered two Israel Embassy staffers last night:
he was affiliated with the Chicago branch of Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) - PSL glorifies terror, praises armed resistance, & promotes intifada
his posts backed Hamas, Hezbollah, & said “bomb Tel Aviv”
witness says he pulled out a red kaffiyeh & yelled “Free Palestine” and “Intifada revolution”
he was employed by American Osteopathic Information Association (AOIA)
Suspected Israeli Embassy Shooter Worked for Woke Education Group Backed by Ford, MacArthur Foundations by Jessica Costescu and Jessica Schwalb in the Washington Free Beacon
The 30-year-old suspect in the slaying of two Israeli Embassy staffers in Washington, D.C., was, until the middle of 2024, an employee of a left-wing nonprofit underwritten by some of the country’s largest philanthropic foundations that claims to be devoted to chronicling the lives of "historically significant Black Americans."
According to his LinkedIn profile, Rodriguez worked as an oral history researcher from March 2023 to July 2024 at The HistoryMakers, a nonprofit that claims to be "committed to preserving and making widely accessible the untold personal stories of both well-known and unsung African Americans." His biography was removed from the organization’s website Thursday morning.
Though touted in a 60 Minutes profile as a "nonpartisan, nonprofit organization," the group’s work suggests a left-wing political bent. Its digital archive of "first person video oral testimony," for example, includes a number of left-wing heroes but ignores America’s most famous black conservatives.
Rodriguez’s far-left activism began before he joined The HistoryMakers, and he appears to have started an X account pushing radical anti-Israel views while working for the group.
Rodriguez was also a member of the Chicago chapter of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), which regularly organizes anti-Israel protests and collaborates with anti-Israel student groups, including at Columbia University, though the PSL claims Rodriguez hasn’t been involved in over seven years.
Rodriguez currently works for the American Osteopathic Information Association (AOIA) as a "profiles administrative specialist," according to his LinkedIn. The group released a joint statement with the American Osteopathic Association following the shooting.