It may have been the 593rd day of the conflict in Gaza — but last Wednesday, the war came to America. In a nightmarish attack on the streets of D.C., the hatred that’s been boiling under the surface spilled over, taking the lives of a young couple who will never have the chance to grow old together. “Instead of walking you down the aisle,” Israeli Embassy spokesman Tal Naim wrote mournfully, “we are walking with you to your graves.”
Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim were casualties of a battle with no real ground forces, no weapons system, no command structure. But it’s a force that a growing number of countries — including the United States — are desperately trying to overcome: anti-Semitism.
“I did it for Palestine,” the shooter told police officers at the Capital Jewish Museum, where the two embassy workers’ bodies lay outside — the deliberate targets of a man who was born and raised in America. They were a handful of days away from going to Jerusalem to meet his parents. Sarah’s own mother, Nancy, didn’t know Yaron was planning to propose until the entire world realized he never would.
She was two days away from flying to D.C. to watch her daughter’s goldendoodle Andy while they were away. When she saw the news alert about the shooting, Nancy hurried to open the locator app and check her daughter’s location. “I pretty much already knew,” she told The New York Times. “I was hoping to be wrong.” Still reeling, Sarah’s dad admitted, “The ironic part is that we were worried for our daughter’s safety in Israel. But she was murdered three days before going.”
Like so many people in disbelief, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins could only shake his head. “This is not something I expected here on the streets of America. I’ll be very frank.” The day after the killings rocked the Western world, he sat down with Elan Carr, CEO of the Israeli American Council and former U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism.
“This is more than just another incident,” Carr stressed. “This is a major watershed moment in this fight.” As a nation and a world, he underscored, “We have to fight against Jew hatred. We have to understand how dangerous it is. We have to understand how prevalent it is. And we have to understand where this comes from. And when you look at [the shooter Elias] Rodriguez’s background and you look at the ideological indoctrination [that he experienced] to get to this point, it’s very clear that we’ve got a real fight on our hands, and we need to stop the indoctrination of Americans in anti-American, anti-Western, and anti-Semitic values that contradict the very spiritual DNA of our civilization.”
In the days following the attack, larger cities like New York and D.C. are on high alert, promising a bigger police presence around synagogues and other Jewish institutions. The greatest mistake, most believe, is becoming complacent. “I hate to say it,” Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) told Perkins on “This Week on Capitol Hill,” but I think oftentimes we have become numb to these things happening internationally and certainly in the Middle East. But we [should be] completely shocked that they happen in the nation’s capital, right here in the United States of America.”
The Pennsylvania congressman, like so many others, blames the anti-Jewish sentiment taking over college campuses. Here’s a person, he said of the shooter, who “grows up in America and is willing to assassinate and execute Jews on the streets of America.” It’s unfathomable. But then, he lamented, “We have accommodated this global intifada, the calls for ‘Free Palestine,’” he warned. “And this is the result of that. This is the next phase of that. The radical leftist anti-Semitic movement is robust around the world, and it has unfortunately come home to America.”
Let’s be clear, Carr wanted people to know. “‘Free Palestine’ is not a pro-Palestinian statement. It is an anti-Semitic call for genocide against the Jewish people. That’s what that is. And we have to understand that when Americans are indoctrinated in anti-Semitic genocidal hate, they are being ruined. A generation of American kids [is] going to be ruined and raised in a culture of violence and aspiration to jihad,” he paused, “which is what we saw. And so, we’ve got to fight this indoctrination of America’s young people.”
Above all, he emphasized, “This has to be a unifying moment. We have to understand that all of us are in the crosshairs, and we are facing a despicable, violent, evil enemy that is bloodthirsty. We saw that on October 7th. We saw that on October 8th. And the global reaction of glee and joy at the murder of 1,200 Jews with medieval barbarity. And we see it today … in the United States.”
This is all in the shadows of the current Iranian talks, Perry reminded people. “And we know that Iran continues to stoke the flames.” This tragedy, he insisted, “just hints at the urgency of making sure that not only does this rhetoric stop and these actions stop, but that the potential for mass global atrocities” at the hands of monsters like Iran, Hamas, and their proxies “also stop.”
This article originally appeared here.
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