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.

  • HighFructoseLowStand@lemm.ee
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    5 minutes 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.

  • harmsy@lemmy.world
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    43 minutes ago

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

  • Cocopanda@futurology.today
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    24 minutes ago

    Oh hey. It’s the thing I said would start happening to Jewish folks and Israelis.

    Here’s my complete lack of care for their deaths.

    Get out of Palestine and I’ll care again. But until then. I don’t give a fuck.

  • hector@sh.itjust.works
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    4 hours ago

    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.

    • radiofreebc@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      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.

      • hector@sh.itjust.works
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        4 hours ago

        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 ?

  • andybytes@programming.dev
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    4 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.

  • BigBenis@lemmy.world
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    5 hours 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.

    • cfc@lemm.ee
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      1 hour ago

      The only sad thing is only 2 of the pundits died.

    • TheDoozer@lemmy.world
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      2 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.

  • Milk_Sheikh@lemm.ee
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    12 hours 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
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      11 hours 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
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        10 hours 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.

    • Petersson@feddit.org
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      10 hours ago

      Genuinely awful for these two and their families

      Yeah.

      Genuinely awful for these two and their families, but

      Stop. It’s awful. Period!

      • Milk_Sheikh@lemm.ee
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        10 hours ago

        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.

        • Petersson@feddit.org
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          9 hours ago

          But if two people are killed, you don’t have to say: “Well, but what about…”

          • TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee
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            9 hours ago

            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.

            • Petersson@feddit.org
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              9 hours ago

              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.

              • TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee
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                8 hours ago

                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.

              • Milk_Sheikh@lemm.ee
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                7 hours ago

                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.

          • Milk_Sheikh@lemm.ee
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            9 hours ago

            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…

            • Petersson@feddit.org
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              9 hours ago

              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.

          • Bilb!@lemmy.ml
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            9 hours ago

            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.

  • Machinist@lemmy.world
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    8 hours ago

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

    • EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com
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      3 hours ago

      I think only those who already/still support Israel will see it that way.

      Everyone else is sick of their shit and isn’t going to buy the “antisemitic” line because it’s been milked dry. We are well past the point where them doubling-down on calling everything “antisemitic” is going to sway any new people.

    • Auli@lemmy.ca
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      6 hours ago

      Sure but Israel can kill Palestine’s and aid workers from other western countries and nobody cares.

      • rational_lib@lemmy.world
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        4 hours ago

        It’s not that no one cares, it’s that people who do care don’t want to be associated with others who care like this guy.

    • Pyr@lemmy.ca
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      6 hours ago

      Ya only because idiots will read it that way.

      Embassy staff are basically political targets, not ethnic ones, but people will read it that way because anything against Israelis is being anti-jew not anti-israel.