Two staff members of the Israeli embassy in Washington – a young couple on the verge of becoming engaged – were fatally shot on Wednesday evening while leaving an event at a Jewish museum, and the suspect yelled: “Free, free Palestine,” after he was arrested, police said.
The attack was seen by officials in Israel and the US as the latest act in a growing wave of antisemitism as Israel ramps up its offensive in the Gaza Strip, and as food security experts have warned that Gaza risks falling into famine unless Israel’s blockade ends.
The Israeli ambassador to the US, Yechiel Leiter, said the man had bought a ring this week with the intention of proposing next week in Jerusalem.
Here is what we know:
The two victims, a man and a woman, were leaving an event at the Capital Jewish Museum about 9.15pm on Wednesday when the suspect approached a group of four people and opened fire, the DC Metropolitan police chief, Pamela Smith, said at a news conference.
The Israeli foreign minister, Gideon Saar, identified the victims as Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim.
Lischinsky, 28, worked in the political department of the Israeli embassy in Washington as a research assistant. According to the bio on hisTimes of Israel blog, he had a master’s degree in government, diplomacy and strategy from Reichman University and a bachelor’s in international relations from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
He wrote on hisLinkedInpage: “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. The former Israeli ambassador to the US Michael Herzog told Israeli Army Radio that the woman killed was an American employee of the embassy and the man was Israeli.
The suspect was observed pacing outside the museum before the shooting, walked into the museum after the shooting and was detained by event security, Smith said.
When he was taken into custody, the suspect began chanting: “Free, free Palestine,” Smith said. She said law enforcement did not believe there was an ongoing threat to the community.
The violence occurred after the American Jewish Committee’s annual Young Diplomats reception at the museum.
Yoni Kalin and Katie Kalisher were inside the museum when they heard gunshots and a man came inside looking distressed, they said. Kalin said people came to his aid and brought him water, thinking he needed help, without realising he was the suspect. When police arrived, he pulled out a red keffiyeh and repeatedly yelled: “Free Palestine,” Kalin said.
“This event was about humanitarian aid,” Kalin said. “How can we actually help both the people in Gaza and the people in Israel? How can we bring together Muslims and Jews and Christians to work together to actually help innocent people? And then here he is just murdering two people in cold blood.”
The suspect has been identified as Elias Rodriguez, 30, of Chicago.
It was not immediately clear whether Rodriguez had an attorney who could comment on his behalf. A telephone number listed in public records rang unanswered.
He was being interviewed early on Thursday by DC’s Metropolitan police department as well as the FBI. The US attorney in Washington will prosecute the case.
The office of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said on Thursday that he was shocked by the “horrific, antisemitic” shooting.
“We are witnessing the terrible price of antisemitism and wild incitement against Israel,” he said in a statement.
Israeli diplomats in the past have been targeted by violence, both by state-backed assailants and Palestinian militants over the decades of the wider Israeli-Palestinian conflict that grew out of the founding of Israel in 1948.
The Palestinians seek Gaza and the West Bank for a future state, with East Jerusalem as its capital – lands Israel captured in the 1967 war. However, the peace process between the sides has been stalled for years.
The influential pan-Arab satellite channel Al Jazeera aired on a loop what appeared to be mobile phone footage of the alleged gunman, wearing a suit jacket and slacks, being pulled away after the shooting, his hands behind his back.
The shooting comes as Israel has launched a new campaign targeting Hamas in the Gaza Strip in a war that has set tensions aflame across the wider Middle East. The war began with the Palestinian militant group Hamas coming out of Gaza on 7 October 2023, to kill 1,200 people and take 250 hostages back to the coastal territory.
In the time since, Israel’s devastating campaign in Gaza has killed more than 53,000 people, mostly women and children, according to local health authorities, whose count does not differentiate between combatants and civilians.
The fighting has displaced 90% of the territory’s roughly 2 million population, sparked a hunger crisis and obliterated vast swaths of Gaza’s urban landscape. Aid groups ran out of food to distribute weeks ago, and most of the population relies on communal kitchens whose supplies are nearly depleted.