CHICAGO — A homegrown social justice warrior who spent years marinating in left-wing protests and propaganda — from Black Lives Matter to socialist politics — is accused of executing two young Israeli diplomats in cold blood outside the Capital Jewish Museum in the heart of Washington, DC.
The suspect in the antisemitic attack is Elias Rodriguez, 31, a Chicago native and the son of an Iraq War veteran whose antisemitism grew out of his association with US left-wing politics, and not any direct connection Israel or the Palestinian cause, according to federal prosecutors.
Yaron Lischinsky, 28, and Sarah Milgrim, 26, two star-crossed lovers about to get engaged, were gunned down Wednesday night as they departed the American Jewish Committee’s ACCESS Young Diplomats Reception — where attendees discussed how to bring more aid into the Gaza Strip.
Rodriguez shouted “free, free Palestine” — the universal rallying cry of the anti-Israel protest movement — after the killings, witnesses and prosectors say.
Jewish groups say the horrifying murders are the outgrowth of antisemitism that has metastasized into violence after festering in the anti-Israel movement since the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on the Jewish state.
“This is a byproduct of TikTok education and disinformation, and so that’s why this horrific attack – certainly as horrifying as this is – is not surprising, and it is not it cannot be seen in isolation,” Mark Treyger, Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, told The Post.
Both victims were fierce advocates for peace between Israel and its Middle East neighbors.
Rodriguez, who now stands charged with first-degree murder, fired his German-designed H&K 9mm pistol 21 times, even reloading the weapon and firing again as Milgrim — who was raised outside Kansas City — tried to crawl away, sources told The Post.
He then dropped the weapon and ran into the museum.
Witnesses who thought he was a victim of the horrific attack rushed to offer comfort and assistance to the “distressed” suspect, not knowing he was behind the killings.
“He was soaking wet. He was wearing a suit, glasses, brownish-black hair. He was pretty much in a state of shock. He sat by himself. He was pacing,” Yoni Kalin, 31, a witness inside the event told The Post.
“We just thought he was a bystander,” he said, adding people brought him water and checked in on him.
But the chilling truth came out minutes later when police arrived, with witnesses saying Rodriguez produced a keffiyeh scarf from his bag and defiantly boasted, “I did this. I did this for Gaza. Free, free Palestine. From the river to the sea and there’s only one solution, intifada revolution” as he was cuffed and taken into custody.
Rodriguez had ties to radical left-wing group Party for Socialism and Liberation, which has spearheaded protests and routinely post hateful anti-Israel rhetoric on social media.
“End the genocide. Israel out of Gaza now,” the group posted Wednesday — just hours before the DC shooting.
PSL disavowed any association with Rodriguez in a social media post early Thursday.
He was well known to Chicago police, law enforcement sources told The Post, and was a regular fixture at protests for causes including the 2014 Chicago police shooting of teen Laquan McDonald, Black Lives Matter and more recently, opposing the war in Gaza.
A GoFundMe page dating back to 2017 reveals Rodriguez was self-radicalized from years in the crucible of far-left politics. Born and raised in Chicago, he obtained a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Illinois and worked as a content writer for the American Osteopathic Information Association.
The fundraiser, which only garnered $240 in donations, had the goal of sending him to the People’s Congress of Resistance, a leftist gathering in Washington, DC that rallied under the slogan “Stand against imperialism — Down with the warfare state!”
The GoFundMe site, written in first-person ostensibly by Rodriguez, describes himself as the son of an Army National Guardsman who was deployed in Iraq.
“When my dad came home from Baghdad, he came with souvenirs. One was a magazine pouch with a warning in Arabic to back away or my dad would shoot and kill you. He joked that the print was so small an Iraqi would be dead long before they had a chance to read it,” the page reads.
“He also gave me a patch of Iraq’s national flag, one he ripped off of an Iraqi soldier’s uniform because he could.”
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The missive concludes, “I don’t want to see another generation of Americans coming home from genocidal wars with trophies.”
Fast forward to this week, and police are investigating whether he penned an anti-Israel manifesto in the hours leading to the bloodshed, law enforcement sources told The Post.
In the screed, dated May 20, the author suggests 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.”
The writer suggested a violent attack would have been justifiable to protest the 2014 war in Gaza, as well — though fewer people would have understood it.
On Thursday morning, armed FBI agents clad in tactical gear stormed the Chicago apartment building where Rodriguez lived, including federal bomb squad members. Dozens of law enforcement vehicles were parked outside on a leafy green street in Chicago’s East Albany Park neighborhood.
A window of the unit believed to be Rodriguez’s displayed a pair of signs mentioning Palestine. One read “Justice for Wadea,” a reference to a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy stabbed to death in Chicago by his landlord in October 2023. The landlord, incited by war between Israel and Hamas, was later convicted of murder.
Another sign read “Tikkun Olam means free Palestine,” invoking a Hebrew phrase meaning “repairing the world.”
Neighbor John Wayne Fry, 71, told The Post that his interactions with Rodriguez were infrequent, limited to occasional chats in the hallway.
“He was always friendly. On the outside of his door there is a ‘Hello Kitty” sign. He seemed like a normal, friendly guy,” Fry said, noting that a woman also lived in the apartment.
Of the photo of Wadea Al-Fayoume in Rodriguez’s window, Fry said “that gave me the impression that they were very, very sensitive” to the issue of the war in Gaza. “especially the issue of Palestine,” he said.
Although he never heard Rodriguez talk about the war, he said he wishes he had.
“I regret that. I wish that I had an opportunity to talk with him because if I had I would have talked him out of it.”
He said learning of the shootings in DC left him shocked, and that he never got the impression he was harboring such rage.
“As you can see I’m an old man and I learned during the Vietnam War, you don’t stop war with guns and bombs. You stop wars by going to your neighbors, talking to your neighbors, and there is something more powerful than a bullet, more powerful than a bomb. It’s called a vote. That is how you end the war.”
Jewish groups say they are now bracing for what comes next — fearing this attack on two young Israeli diplomats may only be the beginning of a violent new phase of antisemitism in America.
“When you continuously paint Jewish people as monsters and as horrible people, you cannot be shocked that the next step will be antisemitic violence,” said Treyger, of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York.
“This is why many leaders have been warning that this horrific day would become inevitable if good leadership doesn’t step up to denounce what’s happening.”
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