Cycles of violence
On the shooting in Washington DC.
Ever since Israel started up its genocidal assault on Gaza — with Israelis sadistically reveling in the murder and suffering that they are inflicting with the American government and civil society fully complicit — I had wondered many times when this gruesome violence will start to blow back to people here in the US. America, awash with guns, is primed for political assassinations like no other country on Earth. And yet, targeted political killings — like the one Luigi Mangione carried out — are rare. Most of the time, people turn their violence inward — killing themselves, each other, shooting up schools, murdering coworkers.
There have been a lot of protests here against the Israeli-American genocide in Gaza. But not anything violent. Well, the only two acts of real political violence that did happen were carried out by Aaron Bushnell and Matt Nelson. They lit themselves on fire to protest Israel’s genocide and died as a result. But their political violence was against themselves. They martyred themselves, sacrificing their own lives in the hopes of shocking Americans out of apathy at what their own government is doing. It didn’t work that well. America’s civil society barely noticed what they did, and most brushed them off as crazy and even mocked their deaths.
What happened last night in DC is different. In this case, two people working for the government of Israel were killed. They were shot by a man outside an event for pro-Israel Jewish professionals hosted by the American Jewish Committee, one of the most powerful pro-Israel political groups in America. The shooter, Elias Rodriguez, was very clear about why he did what he did. He posted a manifesto on Twitter and yelled “Free, Free Palestine” after he turned himself in right after the act. His political violence was definitely not turned inward. It was turned outward.
The two young diplomats he killed had no power over anything. Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky were a young couple just starting their careers in Israeli diplomacy. One was born in Kansas, the other in Israel — in a settlement built atop a depopulated Palestinian village. They were nobodies, really. But people in power are hard to get to, and so the ones in their orbit — the ones with no protection, the peons — are the ones who usually suffer first. Bibi and Smotrich or Biden and Blinken are not easy to catch off guard.
The outrage that a lot of Jewish Americans are feeling right now is misplaced. What do you expect to happen when you support a genocide? What do you want when your politics are indistinguishable from the Third Reich’s? You think that you’ll always be insulated from the violence you support? Do you really think that someone somewhere won’t snap? That no one will go crazy watching video after video of infants blown apart, their heads ripped open by Israel’s bombs? Do you really think that you and your children will never pay the price? That violence goes only one way? This is the height of hubris.1
The deaths of Sarah and Yaron are tragic. But it didn’t have to be this way. There could have been a different world — a world where these two young people didn’t have to stand, happy and smiling, in front of a symbol that’s become the 21st century swastika.
A lot of Jews have convinced themselves that Israel guarantees Jewish safety. But Israel has done the exact opposite. It puts Jews at risk like never before. Zionism — this stupid dream of a pure Jewish state — has been pumping death, suffering, and hate into the world faster and faster the last two years, and that violence and hate is refracting and coming back to us now…coming back for us all. It won’t matter if you support Israel or if you loathe the hick supremacist ideology that powers Jewish identity today. When blowback comes, it won’t distinguish the finer points of your identity.
All over the news we’re seeing this attack being called antisemitic. I read the “manifesto” that Elias Rodriguez, the man who pulled the trigger, put on Twitter before the attack. I must say that I didn’t notice any antisemitism in it. He writes about America’s complicity in the Gaza genocide as much as it talks about Israel’s. A lot of it is about America’s imperial actions, including those in Yemen. In fact, Elias doesn’t use the word “Jew” or “zionist” at all. The word he uses is Israel. And Israel is not all Jews. Israel is a state — and right now it is a state carrying out a genocide. I think that as many Jews as possible should be vocal about disassociating ourselves from Israel. We have to fight this narrative. We have to try to prevent a real antisemitic turn from coming into existence because of what Israel and America are doing.
We’ll know a lot more about Rodriguez in the coming days. Who knows maybe they’ll dig up something we don’t yet know, beyond the fact that he went from a standard lefty millennial protesting imperialism and Amazon to assassinating people. He made a leap that I imagine not a few young people with little to lose are verging on more and more these days.
So with that I think it makes sense to repost what he wrote in full so you can decide for yourself whether his act was antisemitic or not. Though a warning: His note is well written and thoughtful. Don’t be surprised if you learn a thing or two or find yourself agreeing with pretty much everything he writes.
Explication
May 20, 2025