After a gunman murdered two people outside a Jewish museum, a wide range of major Jewish groups has asked the federal government to sharply increase its funding for religious institutions’ security to $1 billion.

The request is one of several made by the coalition in the wake of the attack outside the Capital Jewish Museum on Wednesday, when a shooter killed two employees of the Israeli embassy. In the wake of the shooting, Jewish security analysts are assessing what went wrong, and how such attacks can be prevented in the future.

One piece of that prevention, says the Jewish groups’ statement, is more government funding.

“The apparently targeted attack on individuals attending an event at a Jewish museum and hosted by a Jewish organization represents an elevation in the threat level to the Jewish community, broadly, at a time of already heightened threats and issues,” the statement says, adding that the threat “requires governmental action commensurate with the level of danger.”

The statement was signed by groups representing the Orthodox, Conservative and Reform movements, as well as organizations including the Jewish Federations of North America, the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the Zionist Organization of America, the National Council of Jewish Women, Hillel International and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. The lead signatory was the American Jewish Committee, which hosted the event at the museum.

They call for an increase to $1 billion for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, which funds security for religious institutions and has historically funded a broad range of synagogues, Jewish community centers and Jewish day schools. There are annual negotiations over the size of the NSGP allocation, which was less than $300 million in 2024, and which was frozen for a time this year amid the Trump administration’s cuts to the federal government.

Jewish New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, in 2023 proposed an increase to $1 billion.

The statement also calls for the government to “dedicate funding to meet the urgent need for additional security personnel at Jewish institutions,” as well as for increased police funding.

The statement said the attack was “the direct consequence of rising antisemitic incitement in places such as college campuses, city council meetings, and social media that has normalized hate and emboldened those who wish to do harm.”

It called for more government emphasis on fighting hate crimes and monitoring domestic terrorism. It also called on the government to hold “social media, gaming, messaging, and other online platforms accountable for amplification of antisemitic hate, glorification of terrorism, extremism, disinformation, and incitement.”

In recent years, social media platforms including Facebook and X, which is owned by senior Trump administration official Elon Musk, have loosened their restrictions on hate speech.

 

The Trump administration has revoked its permission for Harvard University to enroll international students, in a dramatic escalation of what the Department of Homeland Security says is an effort to curb antisemitism at the university.

The move “means Harvard can no longer enroll foreign students and existing foreign students must transfer or lose their legal status,” a Thursday DHS press release states.

The order does not appear to carve out exceptions for Israeli or other international Jewish students. Asked if the order would also apply to Israeli and international Jewish students, a DHS representative directed the Jewish Telegraphic Agency back to the initial statement.

Jewish leaders at Harvard, including the director of the school’s Hillel, believe such students will also be targeted by the ruling, and at least one Israeli student who spoke with JTA believed the order would target them, too.

“As far as we know, the ban is universal. There are no exceptions,” said Genia Lukin, an Israeli doctoral student in Harvard’s psychology department.

Lukin is in her third out of five years with the program, studying language acquisition in babies who are blind. She initially enrolled at Duke University, but her lab moved to Harvard shortly before Oct. 7. She plans to return to Israel once she’s finished her doctorate — if she’s not forced back earlier.

“I am annoyed, obviously. This is not what we needed,” Lukin said. “A lot of the Israelis are feeling pretty angry, because we both were dealing with all the stuff on campus throughout the last two years, which was a substantial drain on our mental health and well-being, and now we’re also being punished, in a way.”

The government pulled the university’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification, which allows it to enroll nonimmigrant international students. “This administration is holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in the release, explaining why she was taking the unprecedented step.

The move comes a week before Harvard’s commencement exercises. The school enrolled about 6,800 students from abroad last year, making up just over a quarter of the total enrollment, according to university data.

The block on international students is the latest salvo in the war between Trump and Harvard, ostensibly over antisemitism. In recent weeks, the battle has included three rounds of federal funding cuts totalling billions of dollars, a lawsuit filed by the school, and efforts to revoke the university’s nonprofit status.

While some prominent Jews have praised Trump’s Harvard crackdown, many others say the administration’s actions appear more focused on damaging higher education than addressing the concerns of Jewish students.

A not-insubstantial number of Israeli and other international Jewish students attend school at Harvard. The International Jewish Student Center of Boston, overseen by Harvard Chabad, was founded specifically to cater to their needs, as well as those of international Jewish students at other area schools. Recent events at the center included a barbeque for Brazilian Jewish students.

A representative of the center directed a request for comment to Harvard Chabad. The Chabad director, who has been a vocal critic of university leaders for fostering antisemitism since Oct. 7, did not return multiple requests for comment.

Since Oct. 7, some international students at Harvard were among those found to have agitated against Jewish and Israeli students on campus. A recent antisemitism task force report spelled out some of these instances. But Israeli students at Harvard, who will also likely be affected by this order, have also been among the most visibly targeted.

Lukin said the task force report was, “if anything, understated.” She personally knew many of the Israeli students whose accounts were cited by the task force, and said she, herself, had also experienced targeting on campus for activities including advocating for Israeli hostages. “It’s been an especially unpleasant environment.”

But, she said, the actions of the Trump administration would not address the problem. If anything, she said, the pulling of federal grants — which has hit her department and many others — has fostered more campus antisemitism in the backlash.

“People are responding to the issue of antisemitism more negatively because the grants have been pulled,” she said, adding that some at Harvard were now less likely to see antisemitism as a serious problem. She added that it’s now “treated as if it were a lever in the administration.”

Reached for comment, Harvard Hillel director Rabbi Jason Rubenstein provided a statement he initially made last month as the Trump administration began ramping up its attacks on Harvard, criticizing what he described as “the current, escalating federal assault against Harvard.”

Rubenstein said that among the administration’s actions were “threatening all student visas, including those of Israeli students who are proud veterans of the Israel Defense Forces and forceful advocates for Israel on campus.”

In a statement, a spokesperson for Harvard told JTA the administration’s actions are “unlawful” and said the university would fight to be able to enroll students from abroad.

“We are fully committed to maintaining Harvard’s ability to host our international students and scholars, who hail from more than 140 countries and enrich the University – and this nation – immeasurably,” the spokesperson said. “We are working quickly to provide guidance and support to members of our community. This retaliatory action threatens serious harm to the Harvard community and our country, and undermines Harvard’s academic and research mission.”

Requests for comment to two organizations advocating for Jewish interests at Harvard, Harvard Jewish Alumni Alliance and The 1636 Forum, were not immediately returned. A spokesperson for the first group announced on social media she would be “stepping away” Thursday, as the DHS ruling came down.

Requests for comment to some active Harvard student organizations with a focus on Israel and Israelis were also not returned.

While Israeli and other international students wait for more guidance, Lukin said there are options that they could explore. They could try to apply for citizenship, transfer to another school, or potentially finish their programs over Zoom. Any one of them would be a major disruption, and none would help address the supposed reason the Trump administration was taking the action.

“The problem of antisemitism on campus is a very real problem,” she said. “I’ve experienced it for two years. I’m looking at it in the face quite a bit. I think it’s very important to address it and solve it, in ways that are effective and efficient.

“But I would like to see a better environment that doesn’t hurt, indiscriminately, people who have absolutely no reason to be hurt.”

WASHINGTON – In the weeks and months before Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim were gunned down by a man who then shouted “Free Palestine,” President Donald Trump had already waged a battle on pro-Palestinian activism. 

His administration sought to deport student activists. It froze billions of dollars in funding to universities, demanding reforms in how they address antisemitism. And on Thursday, it withdrew Harvard University’s ability to enroll foreign students.

Will the murder of the two Israeli embassy employees — by a gunman who allegedly said he “did it for Gaza” — prompt the president to intensify his crackdown?

Some Republican officials and conservative pro-Israel activists hope so. 

“The fact of the matter is, the Palestinian cause is an evil one,” Rep. Randy Fine, a firebrand Jewish Republican from Florida, told Fox News. 

On Wednesday night, he tweeted, “It is high time for us to acknowledge there is nothing peaceful about this movement and that these demons must be put down by any means necessary.”

He wasn’t alone. 

“The ‘Free Palestine’ movement is fundamentally intertwined with support for barbaric terrorism,” said Rep. Pat Fallon, a Texas Republican. “The movement is anti-western and anti-semitic at its core. The U.S. should not tolerate these pro-Hamas agitators, whether on college campuses, on our streets, or in our government.”

Across an ocean, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu adopted the same tenor, likening the attack, and the suspect’s slogan, to Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack as well as Nazism. 

“The terrorist who cruelly gunned them down did so for one reason and one reason alone – he wanted to kill Jews. And as he was taken away, he chanted, ‘Free Palestine!’,” Netanyahu said. “This is exactly the same chant we heard on October 7th.”

He added, “For these neo-Nazis, ‘Free Palestine’ is just today’s version of ‘Heil Hitler.’”

The Zionist Organization of America, a conservative group whose views often align with Trump’s, said the attack in Washington should be a predicate for further crackdowns.

“We must now double down to quash the terrorism-promoting demonstrations on college campuses,” it said in a statement. “This must stop! This only inspires hatred and violence against Jewish people and others. And we must support the deportation of illegal violent criminals.”

In the day since the shooting took place, a number of Jews have said the tragedy offers a grisly vindication to their warnings that chants such as “Free Palestine” and “Globalize the intifada,” common at campus encampments and other anti-Israel protests, could incite violence. 

“There is a direct line between demonizing Israel, tolerating antisemitic hate speech in the public square, and violent action,” William Daroff, the CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said on social media. “We are now witnessing the deadly consequences of months of relentless antisemitic incitement.”

The Trump administration has already shown a willingness to target speech it views as dangerous. Federal authorities recently interviewed former FBI director James Comey after he posted “8647,” a phrase suggesting that Trump should be removed from office and that Trump’s followers depicted as a call for assassination. No charges were filed although Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, called for Comey’s jailing.

When Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz likened immigration agents to the Gestapo, a top Trump aide, Stephen Miller, who is Jewish, said, “This vile anti-American language can only be construed as inciting insurrection and violence.”

And on Thursday, the Federal Trade Commission launched a probe into Media Matters, a liberal media monitoring group, based on the allegation that its tracking of hate speech on X, which is owned by Trump’s billionaire senior aide Elon Musk, amounts to commercial interference.

In this environment, the killing of the Israeli embassy staffers will only harden positions on both sides, said Michael Koplow, the chief policy officer at the Israel Policy Forum whose doctorate was on political ideology.

“It’s only going to reinforce the divisions that we’ve already seen,” Koplow said in an interview. “People who support the administration’s what I would describe as a heavy handed approach to pro-Palestinian speech, to issues of protests on campus. this will provide plenty of fodder.”

Those who oppose the crackdown will say the suspect’s repetition of a commonplace phrase is less salient than his apparent support for extremist groups, a posture that, Koplow said, is not characteristic of the mainstream pro-Palestinian movement. (A range of vocally pro-Palestinian politicians condemned the murders as antisemitic; a fringe of social media users have celebrated the attack.)

“It seems that he has gone for years well beyond pro-Palestinian speech, and has advocated violence and openly supported Hamas and Hezbollah,” Koplow said, referring to social media accounts attributed to the alleged shooter.

There was no sign yet that the Trump administration was ready to cite the latest attack to further its crackdown, although President Donald Trump in a social media post attacked “radicalism.”

“These horrible D.C. killings, based obviously on antisemitism, must end, NOW! Hatred and Radicalism have no place in the USA,” he wrote.

Pam Bondi, the attorney general, and Dan Bongino, the deputy FBI director, were focused in their statements on prosecuting the alleged killer. 

“We will follow the facts, we will follow the law and this defendant, if charged, will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law,” Bondi said in a Wednesday night press conference. 

“Targeted acts of anti-Semitic violence are typically carried out by spineless, gutless cowards,” Bongino said. “And the penalties will be harsh as we tighten up this investigation and run down any additional leads.”

A recent poll found that, 77% of Jewish voters are concerned about antisemitism on college campuses, but 64% disapprove of the job Trump is doing on the issue. Liberal-leaning Jewish organizations who decry what they see as Trump’s heavy hand have tussled in recent months with establishment organizations who have welcomed at least some of the measures.

Amy Spitalnick, the CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, which has spearheaded criticism of Trump administration overreach in its handling of antisemitism, said she did not think Jewish opinion would budge on the issue, even after the shooting.

“The Jewish community in general has been able to hold two truths, that antisemitism is real, that our fears are legitimate – they were proven legitimate last night yet again,” she said in an interview. “And that the solution is not to undermine our democracy and our academic institutions.”

Elias Rodriguez, the Chicago man charged with killing two Israeli embassy employees outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, shot his victims multiple times, including firing at one repeatedly as she attempted to crawl away, according to an FBI agent’s account of the incident.

The account was filed as the Justice Department charged Rodriguez with multiple crimes on Thursday, some that carry a potential death sentence if convicted. He is being charged with the murder of foreign officials, first-degree murder and other crimes in connection with the killings of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim.

According to the charging document, Rodriguez told police officers arriving on the scene, “I did it for Palestine. I did it for Gaza.”

The document corroborates accounts from people on the scene who had been attending the event at the museum organized by the American Jewish Committee. They said the alleged shooter had entered the museum and remained for some time before confessing to authorities and being arrested. He shouted, “Free, free Palestine” while being led away, video showed.

The document does not illuminate how Rodriguez allegedly selected his victims, who had exited the event when they were killed. But it adds new details about their last moments, including that they were shot from the back while they were waiting at a crosswalk adjacent to the museum, after Rodriguez passed them. It also says security footage showed Rodriguez firing several times on the victims after they fell to the ground and shooting the woman, Milgrim, as she attempted to crawl away and sit up.

It also says Rodriguez traveled to Washington, D.C., from his home in Chicago the day before the attack and checked a gun in his luggage. The gun was purchased in 2020, the document says. The document also says Rodriguez said he had “purchased a ticket” for the event several hours before it was due to begin.

The event, which was for young Jewish professionals and focused in part on diplomatic strategies to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza, made its location information available only to registrants. Jewish security groups are examining potential lapses that might have enabled the shooting to take place.

When he arrived Thursday morning at Taboonia, the Druze restaurant he owns in Chelsea, Raif Rashed still didn’t know that two Israeli embassy employees had been gunned down outside a Jewish museum in Washington, D.C.

When he was told of the attack by a reporter, he exhaled: “Wow, wow, wow.”

Then, half-jokingly, he said his restaurant was open for anyone who needed a warm and safe space.

“I mean, when is all that going to be done?” he said. “If you feel — if you feel scared, you can come by. Don’t worry, we can protect you!”

Like a not-insignificant share of Israelis, Rashed has personal experience with violence. He’s lived in Jersey City, New Jersey, since 2019 but was in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and narrowly escaped the Hamas terror attack at the Nova music festival.

He also wasn’t the only Israeli in New York City to react to the murder of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim with responses honed in a country that has become used to terror attacks: initial shock, resignation and then a resolve to press on.

“It’s frightening and it’s difficult to leave it aside when it hits so close to home,” said Erela Nornberg, a family and child therapist. “But on the other hand, these things happen from time to time, and Israelis know that life must go on.”

Nornberg, like Rashid, has made it her job to create an inviting space for Israelis. After Oct. 7, she founded the Israeli Hug Center on the Upper West Side to offer support groups and services to Israelis. She extended drop-in hours on Thursday evening, anticipating that some people will feel a desire to connect after what happened in Washington.

But she said she understood that others might well feel a special urge to stay home.

“When you speak about trauma, there’s always an event, and then there are triggers that kind of bring you back to that event,” she said. “So it may trigger for some people different emotions.”

Nornberg, who has raised her three children in New York City, said she felt as safe Thursday as she does any day, including when she attended her son’s graduation at Columbia University Wednesday afternoon. Since Oct. 7 and the outbreak of the Gaza war, the campus has been fraught with pro-Palestinian protests, encampments and allegations of antisemitism.

“Did I feel safe? I don’t know if I feel safe, but I did it,” Nornberg said of the commencement. “Those are really crazy times. So I don’t feel safe anywhere.”

Gathering with other Israelis is a practice she’s honed over the past 19 months, since the Hamas attack.

“Really, as Israelis, we know that things can happen, and the most we can do is to stay together, support each other,” she said.

At an interfaith press briefing Thursday morning at the Center for Jewish History downtown, New York City Mayor Eric Adams — who is running for reelection as an independent candidate and exploring a run on an “EndAntiSemitism” ballot line — referred to the shooting as a “depraved act of terrorism” that will “leave a scar not only on Jewish citizens of this city and country, but for all of us of goodwill.”

He added, echoing a range of other voices, “This violence is exactly what they mean when you hear the words ‘Globalize the intifada.’ It is the actual playing out of these comments.”

Adams was joined by faith leaders from the Jewish, Muslim and Christian communities, as well as Jewish officials including Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, Deputy Mayor Fabian Levy, and Moshe Davis, the new head of the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism.

The most direct physical link to the two victims in New York City is at the Israeli consulate in Turtle Bay. But Consul General Ofir Akunis said he is not worried about the consulate’s security — which is already tight on a normal day — or that of his employees.

Akunis said in an interivew that he has asked staff to be more vigilant of their surroundings, but is otherwise more confident in the atmosphere in New York than he was around this time last year, when pro-Palestinian protests on campus and on the streets were more visible.

“All of us and the employees themselves, they’re feeling very secure and safe in the city and around the embassy and around the consulate,” Akunis said. “But from time to time, right after such bad news, we need to be more careful.”

Akunis recalled a thwarted terror attack on the Israeli consulate in New York back in December, in which an 18-year-old college student from Virginia referred to the building as “a goldmine of targets” and revealed his plans to an undercover law enforcement agent.

The student, identified as Abdullah Ezzeldin Taha Mohamed Hassan, an Egyptian citizen and a resident of Falls Church, Virginia, was identified as an ISIS supporter, and charged with “distributing information about weapons of mass destruction online” as well as plans to plot a mass casualty attack.

Akunis did not know Lischinsky or Milgrim, who worked in Washington. He called their deaths “a huge tragedy.”

“We are always very much, let’s say, paying attention to the security issues,” Akunis said.

“But the threat is real,” he added. ““It’s not chantings and yellings anymore. It’s just someone took his rifle and shot two innocent people: a young, beautiful couple. It’s really unbelievable. So I hope that people will understand the real threat of the extremists.”

On Wednesday night, three armed security officers stood guard as the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington held its annual meeting in the nation’s capital. On the agenda: discussions about the various ways antisemitic rhetoric can lead to violence.

Hours later, JCRC CEO Ron Halber said, he found out about the deadly shooting of two Israeli embassy staff at the Capital Jewish Museum. It was a nightmare come to life.

“It’s just godawful. There’s no other way to describe it. It was a horrific, antisemitic, anti-Israel, violent attack,” Halber told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency Thursday. “For years I’ve said in Washington, we’re lucky we’ve never had anything” of this magnitude attacking the Jewish community. “That record came to an end last night.”

In the attack’s aftermath, Jewish community professionals including Halber are refocusing, again, on how to protect their institutions from threats. The shooting has also raised urgent questions: What went wrong? And what needs to change?

“Why they failed tonight we obviously have to figure out,” Eric Fingerhut, CEO of the Jewish Federations of North America, said in an interview with JTA hours after the shooting, regarding security.

He added later, “The risks have continued to rise as antisemitism has risen and as anti-Israel behavior in America has risen and our security teams have worked so hard to keep up with that. They obviously didn’t succeed tonight but we will not stop until we’ve ensured the security of our community.”

The timeline of the attack is relatively clear and, to security analysts, troubling: According to reports, the attacker shot his victims, the couple Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, on the street outside the museum as the event, organized by the American Jewish Committee, was winding down.

He then walked inside the museum, where an eyewitness said organizers offered him water and he remained for around 10 minutes until police arrived and he confessed to the shooting. Both elements of the incident — that the attacker was able to reach his victims outside the event and then proceed inside for an extended period of time — indicate missteps, according to security professionals.

“What concerned me as a seasoned law enforcement official is in all the work and the efforts that we put into training civilians, his behavior was almost literally screaming that there’s an issue here,” said Paul Goldenberg, the former head of the Secure Community Network, which coordinates security for Jewish institutions nationwide. Goldenberg said that in a widely circulated video of the suspect entering the building, he appeared nervous and disheveled, with jerky movements.

Goldenberg says in the future, rank-and-file attendees need to be aware of those signs — and act on them by alerting someone.

“The second he walked in after the shooting there should have been a plan,” added Goldenberg, who is now the chief policy adviser and head of global policing at Rutgers University’s Miller Center on Policing. “If we know that he just shot individuals outside, whatever security was in place, he never should have made it inside that building.”

Neither the AJC nor the museum immediately responded to JTA queries about who was responsible for security on Wednesday night. But by Thursday afternoon, five of the leading Jewish groups that focus on security put out a series of security recommendations for future events.

The recommendations focus principally on expanding the security perimeter of events; withholding the details of events and vetting attendees; and coordinating with law enforcement or hiring security guards.

The AJC had done at least some of that: The invitation said the location would be “shared upon registration.”

“The Jewish community is already among the most hardened targets in the country,” Oren Segal, who oversees the ADL’s Center on Extremism, told JTA prior to the recommendations being publicized. “Bulletproof glass and metal detectors is the norm. And the question is, how broad does the perimeter need to be for the Jews to feel secure?”

Leading up to the event, the museum was broadly conscious of threats. The day before the shooting, it had announced a new security grant from the local D.C. government — one that Halber said the JCRC had helped arrange — in connection to a new exhibit on LGBTQ Jews.

The $30,000 grant was meant to help the museum cover the costs of security guards both at the front desk and roaming around the museum “to make sure that everybody is safe and that we are prepared in the event of an emergency,” executive director Beatrice Gurwitz told local news at the time. She added that the grant “also helps our staff prepare.”

After the shooting, Gurwitz and the museum’s board said in a statement they were “heartbroken by the murders,” vowing to reopen in the coming days “with all necessary security in place.”

In addition to the museum grant, Halber has also helped arrange state and local Jewish security grants in Maryland and Virginia. He is now urging increased funding of security at Jewish institutions — funding that has already seen massive boosts in recent years following 9/11, the mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue and other antisemitic attacks — and pushing the federal government to free up “billions” in more security funding for such centers.

That money, he believes, should not go toward major capital improvements like state-of-the-art monitoring systems; instead, he believes Jewish institutions are most in need of funding everyday operating costs to pay security guards and other basic needs.

Halber added that he did not blame the AJC, whose senior staff he knows personally, for any lapses. He also acknowledged that it’s impossible to fully secure oneself from all threats, while noting that the fact the victims were shot outside the venue suggested one proper course of action could be to “extend the perimeter around our institutions.”

“Resources are finite,” Halber said. “I know they did everything possible. There’s no blame to AJC on this. But how far can you extend the perimeter? One block, two blocks?”

Other Jewish community leaders with security expertise told JTA that, while physical security measures remain crucial, they should not be expected to stop every attack.

“We have to know that these things are possible — not probable, but possible,” Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker, who escaped from a hostage-taker at his former synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, in 2022, told JTA on Thursday. Cytron-Walker has credited his own security training with saving his life and those of his congregants.

Now the rabbi at Temple Emanuel in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Cytron-Walker said Jews should have the expectation that their communal leaders “are doing everything they can to make sure that people can not only feel a sense of safety, but to actually have real security protocols in place that enhance our safety.”

Yet, he said, “We also have to acknowledge and understand that in any situation, there’s no way to be 110% secure.”

Cytron-Walker also famously gave his attacker tea when he entered the synagogue — something the rabbi said he’d do again as an expression of the Jewish value of welcoming guests. Asked about the 10 minutes Wednesday’s attacker spent in the museum after killing two people, Cytron-Walker said he didn’t “see a specific parallel” between the two scenarios.

“This individual, it appears, wanted to kill Jews,” he said. “The gunman in my situation wanted to get a convicted terrorist springed. I am grateful in our situation that he didn’t just walk into the synagogue and want to kill Jews. It gave us an opportunity to escape 11 hours later.”

Instead of focusing on physical security, some Jewish leaders said, there should be greater attention paid to what they believe is the real security threat: virulent anti-Israel sentiment, online and in protest networks, that has risen in the months since Oct. 7, 2023, and the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

“I can’t help but think that the persistent demonization of Israelis and Jews, along with the constant glorification of terrorist groups at various events and protests since Oct. 7, created an environment that made this tragedy more likely,” Segal said. “These rhetoric and narratives have consequences.”

The ADL conducts extensive threat monitoring, but Segal said they had not been aware of the shooter’s identity prior to the attack. “He was not top-10-to-watch for us,” he said. “We can’t bat a thousand.”

But, he said, the ADL has been tracking groups “this person is associated with,” including the ANSWER Coalition and the Party for Socialism and Liberation. In a statement on X, the latter group said they had “no contact” with the shooter since 2017 and added, “We have nothing to do with this shooting and do not support it.”

Goldenberg also acknowledged that “I don’t think anyone in this business has ever seen a hotter environment than what we see right now.” And in that environment, he said, everyone, even regular attendees at an event, needs to stay on alert.

“Every single individual has a place when it comes to their own personal security and the security of people around them,” he said. “I’m not saying these people should be cops or behave like cops or counterterrorism specialists.”

But he added, “What people cannot do in this environment is hesitate for a second if they see anything that is suspicious.”

With additional reporting by Ben Sales.

Political signs lined the windows of the Chicago apartment building of Elias Rodriguez, the man officials believe killed two Israeli embassy aides at a Jewish event in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday.

One declared that the apartment was a “Proud Union Home” while another read “Justice for Wadea,” the 6-year-old Palestinian-American boy who was killed in a Chicago suburb in 2023.

A third sign read “Tikkun Olam means FREE PALESTINE.” Tikkun olam is a Hebrew phrase meaning “repair the world” that has come to reflect a shorthand for social justice.

With the exception of the “Justice for Wadea” sign, it later became clear that all of the posters actually appeared in the window of an apartment that belonged to Rodriguez’s neighbor, who said he believed the war in Gaza should end but did not support the actions Rodriguez is accused of taking.

Still, they reinforced the portrait of the suspect that was coming into focus the day after the shooting at the Capital Jewish Museum that killed Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim. Rodriguez’s past activism and online presence, as well as a manifesto thought to have been written by him, all point to a young man driven by long-standing far-left beliefs and steeped in far-left politics.

D.C. police identified Rodriguez, 31, of Chicago as the suspected shooter at a press conference Wednesday night. He implied to officers at the scene that he was responsible for the murders, according to police.

Video from the scene shows the alleged shooter in handcuffs, shouting “Free Palestine” as he is taken away by police. And an eyewitness told Jewish Insider that after the shooting, the suspect started screaming, “I did it, I did it. Free Palestine. I did it for Gaza.” His charging documents contain similar details.

That motivation matches a manifesto signed by an Elias Rodriguez and posted on X about an hour after the shooting, before authorities had named a suspect. The 900-word manifesto makes the case for the “morality of armed demonstration” and was accompanied by a caption exhorting readers to “Escalate For Gaza, Bring The War Home.”

The manifesto’s writer said he had first become “acutely aware of our brutal conduct in Palestine” during the 2014 Gaza war.

Then, the manifesto said, “I think to most Americans such an action would have been illegible, would seem insane,” but things had changed.

“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,” the manifesto said.

The X account that posted the document has also frequently posted about the war in Gaza, including posts from January 2024 with the words “De@th 2 Amerikkka” and “Happy New Year, Death To Israel.”

In October 2024, it posted, “Progressive tweeps, as much as I love delving into the day’s Discourse™️, can we PLEASE save the idealistic and high-minded debate over the morality of sending a truck bomb into the offices of The New York Times until *AFTER* we send a truck bomb into the offi.”

In September 2024, the account posted an image of a headline about Israel sending troops into Lebanon along with the emojis “🔪🐷🇮🇱.”

In November 2023, the account reposted an image of a protest hosted by Jewish Voice for Peace, an anti-Zionist organization that has played a leading role in protesting the war in Gaza.

JVP condemned the shooting in a post on X Thursday morning. “We condemn last night’s fatal shooting of two staff of the Israeli embassy in Washington D.C,” the group wrote. “We are grounded first and foremost in the belief that all human life is precious, which is precisely why we are struggling for a world in which all people can live in safety and dignity.”

The online presence of Rodriguez appears to link him to the Party for Socialism and Liberation’s Chicago chapter, a socialist party that says it takes a revolutionary stance.

A 2017 article in the party’s publication, Liberation Magazine, quoted Rodriguez as railing against a proposed Amazon headquarters in Chicago. The article was taken down after the D.C. shooting.

“[Amazon’s] whitening of Seattle is structurally racist and a direct danger to all workers who live in that city,” said Rodriguez in the article. “So do we in Chicago and all across the country want a nation of cities dominated and occupied by massive corporations where only the rich and white can live and the vast majority of us must live on edges of the city and society living in deeper and deeper poverty?”

In the article, he is pictured outside of former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s house protesting for justice for Laquan McDonald, a Black teenager who was killed by a police officer in 2014.

The Party for Socialism and Liberation rejected the association of Rodriguez with their party in a post on X, but acknowledged that he was affiliated with them in 2017:

“We reject any attempt to associate the PSL with the DC shooting. Elias Rodriguez is not a member of the PSL. He had a brief association with one branch of the PSL that ended in 2017. We know of no contact with him in over 7 years. We have nothing to do with this shooting and do not support it.”

Rodriguez worked in an administrative role at the American Osteopathic Information Association. The organization put out a statement following his arrest, writing that they were “shocked and saddened to learn that an AOIA employee has been arrested as a suspect in this horrific crime.”

Prior to working there, a Linkedin page shows he worked for The HistoryMakers, a Chicago nonprofit that documents African-American history.

Rodriguez’s profile on the organization’s website was removed. But a profile belonging to an Elias Rodriguez on the HistoryMakers website found on the Wayback Machine shows he was an oral history researcher for the organization and received a B.A. degree in English from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

His profile on the site said he “enjoys reading and writing fiction, live music, film, and exploring new places.”

In 2017, Answer Chicago posted a fundraiser for Rodriguez to attend the People’s Congress of Resistance in Washington, D.C. In the GoFundMe page, he wrote about his father, who was an Army National Guardsman, being sent to Iraq.

With Chicago Cubs paraphernalia behind him, Rodriguez wrote, “I don’t want to see another generation of Americans coming home from genocidal imperialist wars with trophies.”

Update: This story was updated after publication to show that some of the posters visible in the windows of Elias Rodriguez’s apartment building belonged to his neighbor, not him.

A deadlocked Supreme Court on Thursday let stand a ruling that blocks Oklahoma from using public funds to operate what would have been the nation’s first religious charter school.

The 4-4 split, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett recusing herself, means the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s decision barring the state from sponsoring St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School will remain in effect. Justices offered no explanation or vote breakdown, stating only that the lower court was “affirmed by an equally divided court.”

The proposed online school, backed by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa, intended to incorporate Catholic doctrine into its curriculum and daily operations, prompting legal challenges over whether state support would amount to government endorsement of religion.

The brief and unexpected ruling came just weeks after oral arguments where the court’s conservative-leaning justices, who make up the majority, had seemed receptive to the school’s position, which relied on the Constitution’s guarantee of religious freedom. The case was closely watched for its potential to reshape the boundaries of church-state separation in public education. A ruling in favor of St. Isidore could have led to the creation of publicly funded Jewish charter schools, a scenario raised by Justice Elena Kagan during oral arguments.

Barrett did not participate in arguments or deliberations, and the court gave no reason for her recusal. Barrett has long-standing personal and professional ties to Notre Dame Law School professor Nicole Stelle Garnett, an early adviser to St. Isidore. The two clerked together in the late 1990s, later taught together at Notre Dame, and Barrett is reportedly the godmother to one of Garnett’s children.

Because the ruling resulted from a tie rather than a majority opinion, it does not set a national precedent on the larger constitutional question: whether the First Amendment allows states to fund religious charter schools, which are considered public schools but operate with more autonomy. If another case makes its way to the court, the court is free to accept it — an eventuality that is seen as likely given the organized effort that reportedly went into developing St. Isidore as a test case.

Two months after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, a man with a gun walked up the steps of a synagogue in Albany, New York, and fired into the air while shouting, “Free Palestine.”

Children were inside the building at the time. It was, it seemed, nearly a nightmare scenario for those anxious about how protests against Israel’s war in Gaza could lead to antisemitic violence. 

In that case, no one was harmed before the man was arrested. But on Wednesday night, the nightmare came true. 

A man opened fire on people exiting a reception for young Jewish professionals at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., killing two Israeli embassy staffers. He then entered the museum and shouted, “Free Palestine” as he was taken away by police.

During nearly 20 months of vociferous protests against Israel, some have increasingly warned that anti-Zionism could motivate the same physical danger as white supremacy or extremist Islamic fundamentalism. On Wednesday night, the shooting offered a cruel validation.

“For those who wondered about the context of whether a particular chant was hate speech or anti-Semitic, this is what it looks like when physically manifested,” Sacha Roytman Dratwa, an Israeli military veteran who is the CEO of the Combat Antisemitism Movement, said in a statement.

“The murderer did not know his victims were Israeli, he just knew they attended a Jewish event,” he added. “When we say that the anti-Semites don’t hate Jews because of Israel, but rather, they hate Israel because it is the Jewish homeland, this is what we mean.”

Lethal antisemitic violence against Jews and Jewish institutions in the United States has been relatively rare. The deadliest incidents — including the 2018 Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh; the shooting at a California Chabad the following year, and the 2014 attack on a Jewish community center in Kansas City — were carried out by avowed white supremacists. There have also been attacks by Islamic terrorists, including the synagogue hostage crisis in Colleyville, Texas, in 2021, and incidents attributed to pure racial animus.

But until Wednesday night, there had not been a deadly attack on a Jewish institution carried out by someone who appeared to be primarily motivated by far-left pro-Palestinian activism or steeped in traditional progressive politics. When watchdogs such as the Anti-Defamation League or the U.S. special envoy to combat antisemitism warned that the antisemitic left was as dangerous as the antisemitic right, they often drew criticism. 

“The ADL isn’t helping anyone when it defines a bomb threat at a synagogue and a Students for Justice in Palestine rally as equally antisemitic,” an editor at the New Republic wrote in early 2024, after the antisemitism watchdog released an audit showing a record-high number of antisemitic incidents, more than a third of which involved criticism of Israel.

Now, the ADL and others are issuing statements to say they were right.

“For those who claim ‘globalize the intifada’ is peaceful and not antisemitic, the horrifying shooting of two young Jewish adults is proof that you are wrong,” Daniel Rosen, president of the American Jewish Congress, said in a statement. “Words matter. Just because one person pulls the trigger doesn’t mean they acted alone.”

Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL’s CEO, said in a statement that the shooting was foretold by the spike in antisemitism in the United States since Oct. 7. The organization does not consider all criticism of Israel, or pro-Palestinian advocacy, antisemitic, but it treats anti-Israel activism directed at Jewish institutions or people who are not engaged in Israel advocacy as antisemitic incidents. Greenblatt publicly adopted the position in 2022 that anti-Zionism ran the same risk of violent attacks as antisemitism.

“When antisemitic rhetoric is normalized, tolerated, or even amplified in our public discourse, it creates an environment where violence against Jews becomes more likely,” Greenblatt said after the shooting. “In a climate of relentless antisemitism in the U.S. and globally since Oct. 7, 2023, unfortunately, this tragedy was inevitable.”

Voices on the right echoed the idea that the Capital Jewish Museum shooting was unavoidable, sometimes specifying those that they believed had amplified and normalized antisemitic rhetoric. 

“This type of tragedy is the natural progression of events when the morons running our colleges, far left politicians, and hate merchants on social media continue to normalize and seemingly encourage anti semitism in this country,” tweeted Dave Portnoy, the Jewish founder of Barstool Sports. 

“This psychopath who murdered the two staff members of the Israeli embassy in Washington DC tonight will rot in jail hopefully for life, but he’s not the only one guilty here. There were other murderers,” tweeted Hillel Fuld, an American-Israeli influencer whose brother was murdered in a Palestinian terror attack. 

“Candace Owens. Piers Morgan,” he wrote, naming prominent media personalities who have espoused or provided a platform for anti-Israel rhetoric. “Every single person who held Hamas and Hezbollah flags in the streets, every person who supported them, every person calling to globalize the intifada, and every single human being who contributed to Jew hatred online by spreading Hamas propaganda and blood libels. You are all guilty and you have blood on your hands.”

Emily Schrader, an American-Israeli commentator and activist, wrote that the shooting should put to rest any argument that “Free Palestine” is merely a rhetorical flourish. 

“May every person who said that this ‘free Palestine’ movement is simply ‘speech’ understand once and for all that this is exactly what the anti-Israel movement seeks to do — radicalise and justify unspeakable violence against civilians,” she tweeted. “This isn’t ‘resistance’ it’s cold blooded murder.”

Some have long argued that “Free Palestine” is an inherently antisemitic and dangerous slogan and movement. 

“‘Free Palestine’ — the slogan, the fantasy, and the policy — has always consciously implied the mass murder of Jews in their towns, streets, shops, and living rooms,” Hussein Aboubakr Mansour, an Egyptian dissident who became a foreign policy analyst in the United States, wrote in Tablet Magazine soon after Oct. 7.  

“Few are willing to say so openly, but in many intellectual, professional, and popular circles in the Middle East and the West, the idea of Palestinian national liberation has long been framed in terms that condone or necessitate the indiscriminate killing of Jews,” wrote Mansour, who last year joined the Israeli think tank Jerusalem Center for Foreign Affairs. On Thursday, he tweeted that he knew and liked Yaron Lischinsky, one of the victims in the D.C. shooting. 

Last month, after pro-Palestinian protesters clashed with pro-Israel demonstrators in Brooklyn when an Israeli far-right minister was speaking, the pro-Israel Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres wrote that violence there should have been expected.

“Violence is not a bug but a feature of the so-called ‘Free Palestine’ movement, which has no desire to free Palestinians from Hamas,” Torres said at the time. 

On Thursday, he said the shooting at the Capital Jewish Museum had made “tragically real” the danger of the movement. “When you repeat slogans like ‘globalize the intifada,’ you are inciting violence against Jews in the United States and around the world,” Torres tweeted. “The danger of incitement is no abstraction.”

The voices characterizing the D.C. shooting as an outgrowth of contemporary rhetoric included some who regularly criticize the far right in Israel and the United States.

“More information will emerge, of course, but it is clear that antisemitic speech, including criticism of Israel that crosses the line into justifying the murder of Jews  or Israelis, can inspire violence,” Rabbi Jill Jacobs, CEO of Truah, the liberal rabbinic human rights group, wrote on Facebook.

Some have argued that “Free Palestine” is not inherently dangerous and should be heard as a peaceful call for liberation in most cases. But Alana Zeitchik, a New York City influencer who came to prominence after her family members were taken hostage on Oct. 7, wrote on social media after the shooting that she had been unable to overcome an instinctive revulsion triggered by the chant, as much as she might have wanted to.

“The sound of the chant ‘free, free Palestine’ makes me recoil in disgust,” she wrote on Instagram, adding, “The feeling is immediate alarm and disgust. It is a feeling of fear for myself and my loved ones, and now it is also associated with a radical man who killed two Jews outside of a Jewish event. It’s not because I don’t want Palestinians to be free, it’s because too many of the people who chant it are radical Jew-haters.”

Zeitchik added, “I have tried to uncouple the feeling from the words for the sake of my Palestinian friends, but I cannot. Not now and maybe not ever.”

In the wake of the shooting, Benjamin Birely, an Israeli doctoral student whose popular Instagram account, HolylandSpeaks, says it is “giving you nuance where others aren’t or can’t,” likened the violent radicalization of anti-Israel leftists to the radicalization of those who have absorbed Islamophobia online and gone on to attack Muslims. 

“When Israelis are relentlessly and unquestioningly demonized as the manifestation of all that is evil in the world, this is what happens. The global left (and I mean left, not liberals or center-left moderates) has created an environment ripe for violent radicalism,” Birely wrote, adding that it was essential now to hear condemnation of the shooting from those on the far left.

“The far left is a danger to Israelis and Jews everywhere, and it’s time that the few same voices that remain in those circles speak up now,” he wrote, “before more Jews are murdered.”

Correction: This story has been corrected to show that Daniel Rosen is the president of the American Jewish Congress, not the American Jewish Committee.

WASHINGTON – A hawkish Israeli leader, itching for a pretext to expand the war against Palestinian groups, seizes on the shooting of an Israeli diplomat in a foreign capital.

That was how Israel’s first Lebanon war came to be, in 1982. Israel was chafing at the restraints of a Reagan administration-brokered ceasefire with the Palestine Liberation Organization the year previous.

A June 3, 1982 shooting attack on Israel’s envoy to London, Shlomo Argov, provided the pretext sought by Israel’s defense minister, Ariel Sharon. On the evening of June 5, Israel’s cabinet convened and ordered the invasion of Lebanon.

The scenario has echoes in the current moment: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu just expanded the war against Hamas in Gaza, against the inclinations of a Republican president who wants the war to end.

And on Wednesday night, a gunman claiming to act on behalf of Palestinians allegedly shot dead a young couple who were staffers at the Israeli embassy in Washington.

There are differences: Argov survived the shooting. Netanyahu has forcefully condemned Wednesday’s attack, but, unlike then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin, he has not cited it as a pretext to further intensify the war against Hamas.

Still, there are parallels: Like Begin, Netanyahu had reason to believe that the replacement of a Democratic president by a hawkish Republican would remove Israel’s constraints.

But just as Begin was disappointed with President Ronald Reagan’s heavy hand in keeping Israel from acting against its enemies, so too has Netanyahu been blindsided by President Donald Trump’s maneuvers to restore Middle East peace — at times without Israeli involvement.

And like Sharon, who cajoled Begin into launching the war, Netanyahu has publicly chafed at U.S. demands for a ceasefire. He laid down his conditions in a press conference Wednesday evening in Israel, hours before the shooting: the eradication of Hamas, the removal of its entire leadership from the Gaza Strip — and the implementation of the “Trump plan” to encourage Palestinians to voluntarily leave Gaza.

“Everyone calling on us to end the fighting before these goals are met is essentially calling to leave Hamas in power,” Netanyahu said. He framed his demands as comporting with those of Trump, but he made the speech days after reports emerged that one of Trump’s top negotiators, Steve Witkoff, was pressing Israel to cease fire.

The ceasefire that Reagan’s envoys brokered in July of 1981, months after Reagan entered office, had similarly left Begin and Sharon unsatisfied. The PLO, then based in Lebanon, saw the ceasefire as applying strictly to the Israel-Lebanon border. The Reagan administration perceived the terms of the ceasefire as ending any action against Israel that originated in Lebanon.

Israel believed the ceasefire should apply to any action carried out on behalf of Palestinians anywhere, and believed that terrorist activity in the year between July of 1981 and June of 1982 – including attacks in Italy, Paris, Antwerp and finally, on Argov in London — were violations.

It didn’t matter that Abu Nidal, the nom de guerre of the man whose agents carried out the attack on Argov, was the deadly enemy of PLO leader Yasser Arafat. “Abu Nidal, Abu Shmidal,” Begin reportedly seethed when he was presented with the argument that the Argov attack did not constitute a ceasefire violation.

At present, the alleged Washington gunman has no known ties to Hamas, and appears to have emerged from far-left U.S.-based pro-Palestinian groups.

The Lebanon war technically ended under U.S. pressure in September of 1982, after a Christian militia that at times coordinated with Israel massacred hundreds of Palestinians in a refugee camp, but in reality it simmered until the summer of 2000, when Israel withdrew its troops from an occupation in the south of the country.

Argov recovered from the bullet wound to his head. A year and a month after Abu Nidal’s agents attempted to kill him, he released an interview with a startling takeaway: The attack on him did not justify the Lebanon war.

“Our nation emerged from this war weaker than it was before,” he said. “Israel must always avoid embroilment in unreasonable military adventures… Our soldiers should always have the right [to know] that they will not be sent to war unless war is the sole option for survival.”

The unrest and chaos sowed by Israel’s occupation helped give rise to Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese terror group. A decade later, Israel assassinated Hezbollah chief Abbas al-Mussawi.

A Hezbollah-aligned group plotted its revenge on another diplomatic mission: the March 17, 1992, attack on the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, which killed 29 people and wounded hundreds.

Argov died in 2003, aged 74.