Two staff members of the Israeli embassy in Washington – a young couple on the verge of becoming engaged – were fatally shot on Wednesday evening at about 9.15pm while leaving an event at a Jewish museum.
The suspect yelled “Free, free Palestine” after he was arrested, police said.
The attack was seen by some officials in Israel and the US as the latest act in a growing wave of antisemitism as Israel ramps up its offensive in the Gaza Strip, and as food security experts have warned that Gaza risks falling into famine unless Israel’s blockade ends.
Here is what we know:
The victims
The two victims, identified by the Israeli foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, as Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, were both Israeli embassy employees. The Israeli ambassador, Yechiel Leiter, told reporters Lischinsky had “purchased a ring this week with the intention of proposing to his girlfriend next week in Jerusalem”.
Lischinsky, 30, a German Israeli, worked in the political department of the Israeli embassy in Washington. According to the bio on his Times of Israel blog, he had a master’s degree in government, diplomacy and strategy from Reichman University and a bachelor’s in international relations from Hebrew University.
The Israeli ambassador to Germany, Ron Prosor, said on X that Lischinsky was born in Nuremberg and that he “was a Christian, a true lover of Israel, served in the IDF, and chose to dedicate his life to the State of Israel and the Zionist cause”.
“He embodied the Judeo-Christian values and set an example for young people worldwide,” Prosor added.
Lischinsky moved to Israel when he was 16, according to his LinkedIn profile, where he also wrote: “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.”
The German-Israeli Society – a group that promotes relations with Israel – said that Lischinsky was a founding member of its youth forum, the group’s counterpart in Israel, and took a job at the Israeli embassy in Washington in 2022. It said that he was also a passionate photographer.
On Instagram, his bio included a yellow ribbon symbolizing the struggle to free the hostages taken by Hamas during its 7 October 2023 attack on southern Israel that ignited the war in the Gaza Strip.
Milgrim, 26, 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”.
“Her dedication to building a better future was evident in everything she did,” it said. “Her voice and spirit will be profoundly missed.”
In 2017, after swastikas were graffitied at Milgrim’s high school in Prairie Village, she told the local television station KSHB-TV: “I worry about going to my synagogue, and now I have to worry about safety at my school. And that shouldn’t be a thing.”
She graduated from the University of Kansas in 2021.
The former Israeli ambassador to the US Michael Herzog told Israeli Army Radio that the woman killed was American and that the man was Israeli.
“Yaron and Sarah were our friends and colleagues,” the embassy said in a social media post. “They were in the prime of their lives. This evening, a terrorist shot and killed them as they exited an event at the Capital Jewish Museum in DC.
“The entire embassy staff is heartbroken and devastated by their murder. No words can express the depth of our grief and horror at this devastating loss. Our hearts are with their families, and the embassy will be by their side during this terrible time.”
The attack
The suspect, who was observed pacing outside the museum before the shooting, walked into the museum after the shooting and was detained by event security, the DC Metropolitan police chief, Pamela Smith, said.
When he was taken into custody, the suspect began chanting, “Free, free Palestine,” Smith said. She said law enforcement did not believe there was an ongoing threat to the community.
The violence occurred after the American Jewish Committee’s annual Young Diplomats reception at the museum.
Yoni Kalin and Katie Kalisher were inside the museum when they heard gunshots and a man came inside looking distressed, they said. Kalin said people came to his aid and brought him water, thinking he needed help, without realising he was the suspect. When police arrived, he pulled out a red keffiyeh and repeatedly yelled: “Free Palestine,” Kalin said.
“This event was about humanitarian aid,” Kalin said. “How can we actually help both the people in Gaza and the people in Israel? How can we bring together Muslims and Jews and Christians to work together to actually help innocent people? And then here he is just murdering two people in cold blood.”
The suspect
The suspect has been identified as Elias Rodriguez, 30, of Chicago.
It was not immediately clear whether Rodriguez had an attorney who could comment on his behalf. A telephone number listed in public records rang unanswered.
He was being interviewed early on Thursday by DC’s Metropolitan police department as well as the FBI. The US attorney in Washington will prosecute the case.
Little is yet known about Rodriguez. On Wednesday evening, condemning the war in Gaza and both the Israeli and American governments, he wrote on X:
“In the wake of an act people look for a text to fix its meaning, so here’s an attempt. The atrocities committed by the Israelis against Palestine defy description and defy quantification.”
He was quoted on the website of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) in a 2017 post about a protest the group attended at then Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel’s house over the police shooting of Laquan McDonald.
However, in a post on X, PLS denied Rodriguez was a member. “We reject any attempt to associate the PSL with the DC shooting,” the party said. “Elias Rodriguez is not a member of the PSL. He had a brief association with one branch of the PSL that ended in 2017. We know of no contact with him in over 7 years. We have nothing to do with this shooting and do not support it.”
Reaction so far
The office of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said on Thursday that he was shocked by the “horrific, antisemitic” shooting.
“We are witnessing the terrible price of antisemitism and wild incitement against Israel,” he said in a statement.
The US president, Donald Trump, as well as leading Republican and Democratic representatives, also condemned the violence.
“We strongly oppose the expansion of military force in Gaza and the restriction of aid in Gaza,” said the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, in a statement. ‘‘But that doesn’t provide any excuse for antisemitism or attacks of these kinds, it’s an evil that must be stamped out.”
Israeli diplomats in the past have been targeted by violence, both by state-backed assailants and Palestinian militants over the decades of the wider Israeli-Palestinian conflict that grew out of the founding of Israel in 1948.
The Palestinians seek Gaza and the West Bank for a future state, with East Jerusalem as its capital – lands Israel captured in the 1967 war. However, the peace process between the sides has been stalled for years.
The influential pan-Arab satellite channel Al Jazeera aired on a loop what appeared to be mobile phone footage of the alleged gunman, wearing a suit jacket and slacks, being pulled away after the shooting, his hands behind his back.
The context of conflict
The shooting comes as Israel has launched a new campaign targeting Hamas in the Gaza Strip in a war that has set tensions aflame across the wider Middle East. The war began with the Palestinian militant group Hamas striking out of Gaza on 7 October 2023 to kill nearly 1,200 people and take 250 hostages back to the coastal territory.
In the time since, Israel’s devastating campaign in Gaza has killed more than 53,000 people, mostly women and children, according to local health authorities, whose count does not differentiate between combatants and civilians.
The fighting has displaced 90% of the territory’s roughly 2 million population, sparked a hunger crisis and obliterated vast swaths of Gaza’s urban landscape. Aid groups ran out of food to distribute weeks ago, and most of the population relies on communal kitchens whose supplies are nearly depleted.
