Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim were a young couple “in the prime of their lives” and planning to get married, according to the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C.
“Instead of walking you down the aisle, we are walking with you to your graves,” wrote embassy spokeswoman Tal Naim in an X post after Thursday after a suspected Jew-hating terrorist shot and killed the embassy employees as they exited the Capital Jewish Museum in Northwest D.C.
The accused killer, 31-year-old Elias Rodriguez of Chicago, shouted, “I did it for Gaza,” and then chanted “free Palestine” as he stormed out of the museum, according to The Washington Post. Rodriguez reportedly has been involved in numerous leftist causes, including Marxist-Leninist groups and the anti-Israel movement. Authorities are investigating terrorist ties.
They need only look to the death cult of the far left, spreading antisemitism messages across U.S. college campuses, Democrat-led cities, even in the halls of Congress for such murderous inspiration. The “Free Palestine” crowd of “From the River to the Sea” chanters are the progeny of a radical left bent on burning down America and the rest of the Western World. And the hands of the modern-day Democrat Party that has been commandeered by these Marxists are covered in blood — dripping from its clenched fist.
“These horrible D.C. killings, based obviously on antisemitism, must end, NOW!” President Donald Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “Hatred and Radicalism have no place in the USA. Condolences to the families of the victims. So sad that such things as this can happen! God Bless You ALL!”
Incubators of Hate
Sadly, Thursday’s murders are just the latest in a spate of left-wing violence and a foretaste of terror to come. And the training grounds of hatred and radicalism are U.S. college campuses, as we have seen time and time again in recent years. These institutions of higher education have indoctrinated the next generation of leaders in the dark arts of antisemitism — from the “nonviolent,” pro-Palestine Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel to the countenancing of violent, anti-Israel protests and threats against Jewish students. Harvard, Columbia, UCLA, Northwestern University and other esteemed universities have sown the seeds now bearing the strange fruit of violence.
Incidents of antisemitism have exploded since the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks on Israel in which Islamic terrorist organization Hamas brutally murdered more than 1,200 Israelis, Americans, and foreign nationals. It was the most violent assault on Jews since the Holocaust. Keffiyeh-crowned, college students — many of them privileged kids — rejoiced, taking over U.S. college campuses and chanting death-to-Israel slogans. They were joined by leftist college professors and backed by university administrations in a perversion of free speech and “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
An annual audit by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) shows incidents of antisemitism have soared nearly 900 percent over the past decade. The majority involved Israel, according to the survey. Incidents on college campuses surged by 84 percent from 2023.
At a news conference last month, David Goldenberg, regional director of the ADL Midwest, said incidents have spiked in Chicago, where some are using Israel’s war on Hamas “as an excuse to spread hate and antisemitism.”
“Their well-funded and highly organized campaigns have created an environment where Jews in Chicago feel less safe because they are less safe than we were just a few months ago,” Goldenberg said. “ADL has been tracking antisemitic incidents since 1979 and we have never seen antisemitic activity this bad in Chicago.”
Rodriguez earned an English degree from the University of Illinois Chicago, according to The Washington Post. The newspaper tracked his academic history through a profile, subsequently deleted, at Rodriquez’s former employer, The HistoryMakers, a liberal nonprofit educational institution “that enlightens, entertains and educates the public, helping to refashion a more inclusive record of American history,” according to its website. The University of Chicago has been a hotbed of antisemitism since Oct. 7, 2023, although administration moved to shut down anti-Israel encampments and assert the university’s “institutional neutrality” position.
Eitan Fischer, an economics and philosophy student, shared his horror stories of the university-recognized, hate-spewing Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter in a series published by Jewish Action. Fischer recalled how six days after the massacre SJP rallied in support of the murder of Jews.
“They were supporting the potential murder of my parents and siblings, who live in Ra’anana, only a thirty-minute drive from Gaza. They were supporting the same antisemitic motives that led to the Holocaust,” he wrote.
ADL noted that protestors took over the Institute of Politics building in May 2024. UChicago United for Palestine released a statement calling for “consequences” to the “privacy and safety” of anyone actively supporting Israel in the Israel-Hamas war.
One year after the massacre, protesters at an anti-Israel rally on campus chanted, “Resistance is justified when people are occupied,” and “Long Live the Intifada.”
The Harvard Crimson/YouTube
‘An Unsafe Campus Environment’
The Trump administration is hitting the hatred where it lives. In the opening days of his second term, President Trump laid out an aggressive plan to combat antisemitism, including cutting federal funds to institutions of higher education that allow or endorse antisemitic environments. This week, Department of Health and Human Services nixed $60 million in federal funding marked for Harvard. The latest action is in response to the Ivy League school’s “continued failure to address anti-Semitic harassment and race discrimination.”
“Federal funds must support institutions that protect all students,” HHS stated in a post on X.
On Thursday, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem ordered her agency to terminate Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification, putting an end to the university’s ability to enroll foreign students. Existing foreign students will have to transfer or risk their legal status in the U.S., DHS warned. In a release, Homeland Security asserts Harvard’s leadership has created “an unsafe campus environment by permitting anti-American, pro-terrorist agitators to harass and physically assault individuals, including many Jewish students, and otherwise obstruct its once-venerable learning environment. Many of these agitators are foreign students.”
“It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enroll foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments to help pad their multibillion-dollar endowments,” Noem said. “Harvard had plenty of opportunity to do the right thing. It refused.”
‘That Should Never Happen’
The Trump administration is acting after four years of waffling at best by President Joe Biden to appease the Jew-hating members of his party. So, naturally, the accomplice media is blaming Trump for “making Jewish people scapegoats for his policies.”
A recent Axios piece attacking Trump’s executive actions to protect Jews from hate crimes quoted Lauren Strauss, a professor of modern Jewish history at American University. According to the corporate media outlet, Strauss is concerned that “Trump’s repressive crackdown could stoke further animus against Jews.” Interestingly, American University is one of 60 schools that in March received a warning letter from the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights regarding its failure to “protect Jewish students on campus.” The letters were sent to all U.S. universities under investigation for Title VI violations “relating to antisemitic harassment and discrimination.”
The narrative that standing up against purveyors of antisemitism will spawn more antisemitism is the kind of disordered thinking that has defined the “Speak Your Truth” left and made heroes out of Hamas. Giving free rein to foreign nationals to call for the destruction of Israel and the genocide of Jews is the kind of liberalism that will cost the lives of more victims of hate.
“Two beautiful young people were gunned down last night needlessly. No parents should have to be called and told that their children were violently murdered leaving a religious event at the Jewish Museum,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said Thursday at a press conference. “That should never happen in this world and not in our country. And this person will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.
