- cross-posted to:
- theguardian_us@rss.ponder.cat
- cross-posted to:
- theguardian_us@rss.ponder.cat
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.
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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.
💯 the default assumption of the media is that these Israelis are relatable humans and this is a tragedy… But what is happening in Gaza is somehow morally ambiguous.
Maybe one could argue the sheer scale of the Gaza genocide makes it difficult for the media to humanize them, so they get reduced to just a number of fatalities with lots of digits. But if the media default was that the Palestinian lives had value they would look through the lives lost like those in 9-11 and tell their stories.
Philosophy Tube has a great video about this topic https://youtu.be/rLfzO7Sbdc4. At 27:20 she starts talking about who’s life is worth grieving and who’s is not, and how this is a government level topic. It hits the nail on the head about the differences in reporting two different people’s deaths can have. At 33:45 they specifically talk about the 2008 Gaza war.
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Wonder how many American “pro-lifers” are ok with this genocide
Every. Single. One. Those kids are kids, not fetuses; alive, with hopes and dreams. In other words, completely fucking useless to the “pro life” people.
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 ?
People getting killed in a warzone is different than political murders.
It’s not about who, it’s about context.
News reporting is also about new and unexpected events.
Consider this: People being killed in Sudan or Myanmar gets no attention compared to Gaza.
lol. Describes Gaza as “people getting killed in a warzone”, then has the lack of self-awareness to preach about context.
You sound like an Israeli shill, mate. Dumbing down the language and trying to change the focus to another atrocity.
Gaza isn’t “people getting killed in a warzone”, it’s civilians and children getting bombed in their beds/hospitals/schools/refugee camps and currently being starved to death in the dark by an oppressive fascist regime.
The man who got shot had an active Twitter account. Very stand-up guy. Such a shame he got killed.
And thank you president Trump for speaking out for the man who has always had your back. 🫡
While any loss of life should be saddening, this dude REEEEALLY makes it hard to be empathetic.
Rest in piss.
Well he seems like a total piece of soulless shit, lets give him that.
Contrary to the bogus claims of the media, this dude is not a bullet-riddled corpse!
good ridance
Wonder what his lemmy username is.
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”.
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.
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.
It was always an Apartheid state - their own laws from the very start separate Israeli Citizenship from Israeli Nationality, with only Jews being allowed to have the last (in addition to the former) which has additional rights over mere Citizenship - and it had a Genocide already pretty near the time of its formation called the Nakba, only that was “just” displacement and a few murders rather than mass murdering hundreds of thousands of people.
It’s just that for a while their Propaganda was very successful and they might have even be genuinelly considering merelly not taking over the rest of Palestine as giving back that which they had already stolen was never on the table, nor was the return of the Palestinians or a genuinelly equal society for both Jews and Non-Jews.
Israel was always shit since it’s formation (which by the way involved them commiting terrorist attacks), it’s just that now they’ve gone extreme Genocidal on their way to commiting a XXI Century version of the Holocaust.
The context is important. A UN official said 14,000 children would die in 48 hours. As it turns out that was a grossly exaggerated claim.
a report from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) which stated 14,100 severe cases of acute malnutrition are expected to occur among children aged six to 59 months between April 2025 and March 2026.
The IPC report says this could take place over the course of about a year - not 48 hours
Weissbrod called that out.
I don’t think I would really consider it a grossly exaggerated claim, more of just a misinterpretation of a report.
“For now let me just say that we know for a fact that there are babies who are in urgent life-saving need of these supplements that need to come in because their mothers are unable to feed themselves.”
“And if they do not get those, they will be in mortal danger,” he said.
I definitely wouldn’t claim that it was a claim based on antisemitism as Weissbrod is accusing. It’s a fact that the Israeli state is starving tens of thousands of people for no justifiable reason. I don’t think a misinterpretation of the timeline is really enough to claim someone is participating in blood libel.
Well, as long as 14,000 children die of starvation over a longer time period…
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Really, guy? You’re removing opinions as “misinformation” to protect a genocidal nation’s dignity?
First time?
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Genuinely awful for these two and their families
Yeah.
Genuinely awful for these two and their families, but
Stop. It’s awful. Period!
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.
But if two people are killed, you don’t have to say: “Well, but what about…”
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…”
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.
You’re not going to change your mind.
They might still move even further to the right.
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.
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.
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.
It’s illogical to compare them from a moral perspective. You don’t get to just shoot people because they have a different perspective than you, because they were raised differently or get their news from different places than you do. It’s not exactly whataboutism though, it’s more of a false equivalence. Whatever the case, the gunman is not morally justified in murdering these two people. If you think he is, then you are blinded by ideology and shouldn’t be allowed to participate in democratic society.
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.
You aren’t over reacting. It’s a massive false equivalence comparing what Israel has done against the murder of two individuals. The guy that got murdered isn’t Israel. He’s a person with opinions, right or wrong. He got murdered for a few tweets and an affiliation with Israel. He’s not a combatant, but a civilian. Same for his wife. People justifying these murders are flat out wrong, and there’s no place in America for ideological murders. In order to have a system where free speech is protected, you can’t allow people to be murdered for their views. There is no defending these murders or trying to justify them.
a massive false equivalence comparing what Israel has done against the murder of two individuals.
People aren’t trying to equivocate the two, that would be insulting, not only to the people who were murdered, but to the tens of thousands of people being killed in Palestine.
The guy that got murdered isn’t Israel. He’s a person with opinions, right or wrong. He got murdered for a few tweets and an affiliation with Israel.
I mean he’s a representative of the state, which is why this is a politically motivated murder.
He’s not a combatant, but a civilian. Same for his wife. People justifying these murders are flat out wrong
Explanations aren’t justifications, just because people understand and even agree with the motivations of the killer doesn’t mean the agree with how he acted upon them.
I find the cries for the sanctity of protecting civilians to be pretty meek considering the state these civilians represent have overwhelmingly killed more civilians than armed combatants.
This is the inherent problem with a state targeting civilian populations, it provokes violence upon your own civilians.
In order to have a system where free speech is protected, you can’t allow people to be murdered for their views.
Another person misunderstanding the Constitution…Free speech doesn’t protect you from the public’s reaction to your speech, it guarantees protection from the government targeting you for your speech.
This isn’t an example of someone’s free speech being violated. An actual example would be students being arrested for their protest about Israels actions in Gaza.
There is no defending these murders or trying to justify them.
Again, understanding a motive isn’t justifying. No one said they agreed that those people deserved to be murdered , you’re just moralizing.
Thanks.
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.
Israel is doing worse by a long shot.
“Any attack against a Zionist is antisemitic”
So that means Isreal is a ethnostate?
A genocidal apartheid ethno state.
You forgot colonial
I left out a lot of choice words because the powers that be on most sites take offense when you call a spade a spade, or when you compare said spade to spades that plagued the world during the 1930’s and 40’s.
It was a networking event for Jewish people at a Jewish museum.
And they were two Zionists.
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.
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.
not really random, this guy seems on par with the Israelis watching Gaza bombings from a cliff while eating popcorn. He also seems to have a full hard on for Trump, so for him all kinds of humanitarian crimes are probably ok as long as the president supports Israel State’s genocide. So not really random, perhaps more on the same level as Luigi.
These deaths are also on the people who demand to globalize the intifada.
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Do you think these murders help Palestinians?
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During the last month, I have introduced real life Israelis and Palestinians to each other. I have helped two Palestinians deal with German bureaucracy.
That’s the most recent stuff. A complete list would take too long to write down.
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Israel is now the primary driver of antisemitism throughout the world.
Technically the genocide is antisemitic, because Palestinians are semitic.
Antisemitism only has ever meant Jew hatred. Semitic is otherwise a linguistic term.
This argument is asinine.
Looking into this, it turns out all the dictionaries indeed seem to say it’s jew specific, which I think is a failing of the English language, because Jews are a drop in the bucket for semitic populations.
I’ll concede your point, despite the word structure literally implying something bigger.
Edit added references
The term Antisemitism was invented in German, so no inherent limitation of English. Anti comes from Ancient Greek in the first place, so no this isn’t a limitation of English.
There are many terms and words used, which aren’t simply the sum of its parts.
A hammer has nothing to do with ham for example.
I’m referring to the fact that “anti” and “semitism” are existing complete words. Every other example of a word given the “anti” prefix that i can think of is very clearly meaning, the opposite or against the existing definition of the word.
Antidisestablishmentarianism Antisocial Anticlimactic Antiacidemic Antibacterial Antifreeze Antihero Antihistamine
Hammer in your comment is a poor example, because hammer is its own word, despite the first three letters happening to be an existing other word. Antisemitism is clearly anti and semitism.
What’s annoying, is since this term was coined (as you said, in germany), it was purely a dog whistle for jew hatred.
Wikipedia:
The compound word antisemitismus was first used in print in Germany in 1879[19] as a “scientific-sounding term” for Judenhass (lit. ‘Jew-hatred’),[20] and it has since been used to refer to anti-Jewish sentiment alone.[21][22][23] Due to the root word Semite, the term is sometimes subject to an etymological fallacy whereby it is incorrectly assumed to apply to racist hatred directed at “Semitic people”, in spite of this being an obsolete racial concept.[23]
We need to let language do its thing, and adjust the meaning of this word to mean what it appears to mean, not some wink wink nudge nudge version you have to know ahead of time.
Antiair weapons don’t fight or kill the air.
Antisemitism was introduced as a more polite and scientific sounding euphemism for anti-Judaism. It’s just like racists today calling themselves race realists.
I mean, it’s not like antisemitism needed help, but here we are.
I don’t blame Jews for what’s happening, I blame Israel. Yes, there are many Jews that support what’s happening, but that’s no different from any other body of people.
Claiming what Israel is doing right now reflects on all Jews is the same as blaming trump on all Americans.
Agreed.
It didn’t need help being proudly adopted by uneducated bigots who believed in space lasers, but it was largely missing the intellectual generally accepting crowd. It sure got 'em now.
Antisemites have always blamed the Jews for Antisemitism.
They said Israel. You said Jews. You’re aware those are separate entities, yes? Or are you playing pedantic word games on purpose…?
Bro, you’re not going to stop a genocide by busting a cap in two nobodies half a world away.
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They censored me lol. What is this reddit?
Not to disagree with the claim, but it’s important to incidentally point out that historically speaking, this kind of strategy is ineffective, at least without an organised mass movement to resist the reactionary clampdown. It’s not sustainable. If it were, the US would have solved their healthcare problem already.
Are you implying anyone thought it would?
That’s a what globalize the intifada means in practice.
I don’t see how “globalize the intifada” jumps over to adventurist shootings. In practice, it means actions like writing off weapons factories (e.g. Palestine Action in the UK), strike and blockade actions (e.g. maritime unions, port actions), pressuring governments and organisations into withdrawing support for the zionist regime (e.g. boycotts, BDS movement, university protests) and other mass movement. We saw similar mobilisation with apartheid South Africa and the Vietnam War, so this isn’t some imaginary claim, it’s based on actual history of similar international solidarity movements.
Look up what happened during the second intifada. That’s the context. Of course that also includes militancy, violence, and terrorism.
BDS
Doesn’t even support a two state solution for example.
Vietnam and South Africa were different. Neither of which ended through university protests. The Vietnam war was too expensive and politically unwinnable. Apartheid South Africa ended because the ANC was able to alleviate the fears of white South Africans from being massacred if they lose power. Neither of which applies to Palestine.
Israel(is) can’t go their home elsewhere, like the American soldiers. They also have valid fears of being exterminated if they lose some nance over the situation. Something like October 7th Never happened in South Africa.
Harping on these other situations hinders your ability to understand what’s going on in Israel/Palestine.
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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.
A woman who attended the event, Katie Kalisher, told CBS News that she encountered the alleged shooter right after hearing gunfire.
“Then this man comes in … but he was covered in rain and just looking really distressed and scared,” Kalisher told “CBS Mornings.” “We were comforting him because we thought that he was just somebody out in the street looking for a safe place to stay because he heard some gunshots.”
She said she talked to him to try to help him relax. “I asked him, ‘So, do you like the museum?’ And he’s kind of playing dumb with me,” she said about the interaction. “He goes, ‘Oh, what kind of museum is this?’ I told him, ‘It’s a Jewish museum.’ He asked, ‘Do you think that’s why they did this attack’ … referring to the rounds that we heard.”
She said she told him she didn’t think so and asked if he was OK. Then, she said, “He reaches into his bag and pulls out a keffiyeh and says, ‘I did it. I did it for Gaza.’ And, just starts shouting, ‘Free Palestine.’”
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Well, fuck. This moron didn’t help the Palestinians one bit. Just reinforces propaganda about opposition to the genocide being antisemitic.
Sure but Israel can kill Palestine’s and aid workers from other western countries and nobody cares.
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.
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.
The press will highlight the Jewish Museum part and not the embassy staff part.
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.
Shooting Jews at an event for Jews in a Jewish museum looks kind of antisemitic.
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The wokes called my joke racist, so I became a full on fascist. It’s their fault, really.
Look, it’s you.
Planned ploy
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I blame the killer!
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Brain dead comment, these 2 people don’t run the government of Israel and this solves nothing, more over it just makes things worse and probably helps gain some sympathy for iIsrael
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