Police are probing whether the suspected terrorist arrested for shooting dead two Israeli Embassy staffers in Washington, D.C. blasted out an anti-Israel manifesto online in the lead up to the bloodshed, law enforcement sources told The Post.
Elias Rodriguez, 31, had allegedly chanted “Free, free Palestine” just moments before he confessed to gunning down the couple outside the Capital Jewish Museum late Wednesday, cops said.
As investigators probed a motive behind the horrific antisemitic bloodshed, cops were honing in on a 900-word manifesto brandishing Rodriguez’s name that started circulating online immediately after his arrest, the sources said.
In addition to trying to determine the document’s authenticity, authorities were also trawling through Rodriguez’s electronic devices and probing whether he was self-radicalized, according to sources.
The missive, which was apparently dated May 20 — a day before the slayings — appeared to suggest the killings were an act of political protest ignited by the war in Gaza.
“An armed action is not necessarily a military action. It usually is not. Usually it is theater and spectacle, a quality it shares with many unarmed actions,” the document reads.
The alleged manifesto went on to suggest that those “of us against the genocide” have “forfeited their humanity.”
“But inhumanity has long since shown itself to be shockingly common, mundane, prosaically human. A perpetrator may then be a loving parent, a filial child, a generous and charitable friend, an amiable stranger, capable of moral strength at times when it suits him and sometimes even when it does not, and yet be a monster all the same,” the writings state.
“Humanity doesn’t exempt one from accountability. The action would have been morally justified taken 11 years ago during Protective Edge, around the time I personally became acutely aware of our brutal conduct in Palestine.
“But I think to most Americans such an action would have been illegible, would seem insane. I am glad that today at least there are many Americans for which the action will be highly legible and, in some funny way, the only sane thing to do,” it added.
The author ended the document saying he loved his parents, sister and family — before declaring “Free Palestine.”
The document emerged as Rodriguez was being interviewed by D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department and the FBI early Thursday.
Rodriguez, a Chicago native, is accused of gunning down the couple — Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim — as they left an event at the Capital Jewish Museum.
He was seen pacing outside the museum before the shooting, Washington Metropolitan Police Chief Pamela Smith said.
“Once in handcuffs, the suspect identified where he discarded the weapon, and that weapon has been recovered, and he implied that he committed the offense,” she said.
Witness Katie Kalisher said she was among people inside the museum who spotted Rodriguez entering — looking very scared — after the gunshots rang out.
She said some tried to help him, thinking he was a victim, before he suddenly pulled out a keffiyeh scarf.
“He says, ‘I did it. I did it for Gaza, free, free Palestine’. And he’s chanting this. And then suddenly the police come in and they arrest him,” Kalisher said of the caught–on-camera arrest.
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