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By Michael Koziol
Washington: Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky were rising stars at the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC – young leaders invested in peace-building and building their own life together.
They were due to travel to Israel on Sunday, where Sarah, 26, would meet Yaron’s family for the first time. Yaron, 30, planned to propose to his American partner with an engagement ring he had purchased just this week.
Israeli embassy aides Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky were shot dead outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC. Credit: The Milgrim family via The New York Times
“They were in love. One for the other,” Yaron’s father Daniel told Fox News. “The embassy told us they were like a star couple at the embassy.
“I never expected something like this. He had his whole life before him.”
Milgrim and Lischinsky were gunned down on the street outside Washington’s Capital Jewish Museum on Wednesday night (Thursday AEST) in a targeted, antisemitic attack that has sent shockwaves around the world and reignited anger about Western governments’ failure to combat anti-Jewish hatred and violence amid the war in Gaza.
Robert Milgrim, the father of Sarah, told his local Kansas City television station that his daughter began working at the Israeli embassy in Washington shortly before the October 7, 2023, attack and ensuing war.
Handwritten notes left at the site of the shooting.Credit: Getty Images
She loved animals and had travelled regularly to Israel, he said. Milgrim was not aware his daughter’s boyfriend intended to propose in Jerusalem; he found out from Yechiel Leiter, the Israeli ambassador to the US, who called to say Sarah was dead.
“She had a very strong feeling for Israel, and she also had a very strong desire to figure out and help broker peace,” Milgrim told KCTV.
Police have charged a man from Chicago, named as Elias Rodriguez, who was allegedly filmed shouting “free, free Palestine” while being taken into custody at the museum. He briefly appeared in a District of Columbia court on Thursday afternoon.
A court filing showed Rodriguez faces initial charges of murder of foreign officials, causing the death of a person through use of a firearm, discharging a firearm during a crime of violence and two counts of first degree murder. He could face the death penalty.
An FBI affidavit alleges Rodriguez told police at the scene: “I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza, I am unarmed.” It also says he travelled from Chicago to Washington the day before the shooting with a declared firearm in his checked luggage.
As the political fallout grew, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Milgrim and Lischinsky were not victims of random violence but a targeted attack on Jews, and noted the alleged assailant’s use of the “free Palestine” chant.
In a video about the attack, he criticised British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and French President Emmanuel Macron, who this week threatened Israel with sanctions over its latest offensives in Gaza and stressed the importance of establishing a Palestinian state.
Australia and other Western allies did not join that tripartite statement, which was welcomed by Hamas as “a significant step in the right direction”.
Crime scene tape is stretched across the front of a building where shooting suspect Elias Rodriguez lived.Credit: Getty Images
Netanyahu accused Starmer, Carney and Macron of buying into Hamas’ propaganda and emboldening the terrorist group to continue fighting forever.
“When mass murderers, rapists, baby killers and kidnappers thank you, you’re on the wrong side of justice, you’re on the wrong side of humanity, and you’re on the wrong side of history,” he said.
A Palestinian state would not be free of Hamas, Netanyahu warned. “When you establish a Palestinian state – we’ve seen it – the radicals take over. Iran sends them in and they take over. So don’t give us this talk, ‘It’ll be a peaceful Palestinian state’. It won’t be.”
Returning to the scene of the shooting in central Washington on Thursday morning, Leiter struck a similar tone and singled out Macron for criticism.
Congressman Jamie Raskin lays flowers outside the Capital Jewish Museum after the shootings.Credit: AP
“We had our people slaughtered [on October 7] – it’s not going to happen again. Hamas has to be destroyed, will be destroyed, the very same way the Nazis were destroyed,” he said.
“These are new Nazis, we’re going to defeat them. Antisemitism is on the rise not because of Israel’s responding, but because of countries like France who under this circumstance, now, tomorrow, plan to propose the unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state.”
Meanwhile, the FBI raided a property in Chicago associated with Rodriguez. A sign saying “justice for Wadea” was in the window, referring to the stabbing murder of six-year-old Palestinian-American Wadea al-Fayoume in Illinois a week after the October 7 attack.
A manifesto surfaced online signed by an individual identifying themselves as Elias Rodriguez. The document was posted to X after the shooting but before Rodriguez was publicly identified by police.
Authorities have not commented on the veracity of the manifesto, which implored readers to “escalate for Gaza” and “bring the war home”.
Politicians and members of the public laid flowers at the scene of the deadly shooting on Thursday, just blocks from DC police and FBI headquarters.
“May your memory be a blessing,” one note said. “Praying that this crime is a cry that leads to peace,” another read.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said President Donald Trump was saddened and outraged by the shooting, and had conveyed his support for Israel and the Jewish people directly to Netanyahu.
“This evil of antisemitism must be eradicated from our society,” Leavitt said.
A sign calling for justice for Wadea hangs in the window of an apartment reported to be Rodriguez’sCredit: Getty Images
Deborah Lipstadt, who served as the US special envoy for monitoring and combatting antisemitism under Joe Biden, said whatever the origins of the chant “free Palestine”, it had now become a slogan of hate.
“I think there’s no question – whatever its initial intent, and whatever people were saying initially or meant, it has become a call for violence,” she told CNN. “And not violence against Israelis, which is wrong, but violence gainst Jews.”
In Gaza, flour and other aid started reaching some of the area’s most vulnerable areas on Thursday after Israel let some trucks through – but Palestinian officials said it was nowhere near enough to make up for shortages caused by an 11-week blockade.
Israel said it allowed 100 trucks carrying baby food and medical equipment into the enclave on Wednesday, two days after announcing its first relaxation of the restrictions under mounting international pressure.
Netanyahu said the construction of a “distribution zone” would be completed in the coming days with US companies distributing food in areas controlled by the Israeli military.
“Ultimately, we intend to have large safe zones in the south of Gaza. The Palestinian population will move there for their own safety, while we conduct combat in other zones, and receive humanitarian aid there without Hamas interference,” he said in a video statement released by his office.
Meanwhile, Israeli tanks and drones attacked a hospital in northern Gaza, igniting fires and causing extensive damage, Palestinian hospital officials said on Thursday.
The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing some 1200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting 251 others. The militants are still holding 58 captives, about a third of whom are believed to be alive, after most of the rest were returned in ceasefire agreements or other deals.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive, which has destroyed large swaths of Gaza, has killed more than 53,600 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count.
