On the Antisemitic Murders in D.C.

There is no nuance in the chant “Free Palestine” when it’s paired with bullets

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The man shouted “Free Palestine” as he pulled the trigger. Two Israeli embassy staff members were gunned down outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., a few blocks from the White House. They were unarmed. They were targeted. They are now dead.

Let’s call this what it is: an antisemitic act of terror, not a political protest. And if we’re going to have any moral clarity left in this disintegrating culture – disintegrating because it has decided to throw out its foundational ethos – we need to say it out loud.

There’s a sickness spreading, not just in Gaza or Tel Aviv or through some obscure university campus, but right here, in the West: in our cities, on our streets, pulsing through comment sections, hashtags, and now, gun barrels. It’s the reawakening of an ancient hatred, dressed up in modern slogans. It is provoking us to choose between good and evil, and we seem to be indulging it. It’s antisemitism with a keffiyeh filter: its demanding that we disown our history, the “never again” promises that we made.

Conspiracy theories targeting Jewish people are older than America itself. But recently, they’ve ramped up in velocity and ferocity. From flyers blaming Jews for COVID, to QAnon screeds about global cabals, to TikTok teens parroting Rothschild tropes without knowing who Mayer Amschel Rothschild even was — this cocktail of ignorance and hate is bubbling over.

If you cannot see why the Israeli government is defending her citizens, you are not an activist, you are an antisemite. If you cannot see why Jewish citizens in the West support Israel, you are an antisemite. If you cannot see Hamas offering up children to the retaliatory bombs that they provoke, you are an antisemite. What we saw in D.C. on Wednesday is part of a broader decay. A permission structure. A rising tide of moral shortcuts that begin with “free the oppressed” and end with “kill the scapegoats”. It’s the same mindset that led to Jewish delicatessens being firebombed in Paris, synagogues being attacked in Berlin, and families in Brooklyn being physically assaulted.

The shooter in D.C. didn’t care about nuance. He didn’t stop to ask why his victims supported Netanyahu. He didn’t inquire whether they’d marched for peace or donated to aid efforts. He saw a Jewish museum and opened fire because the idea that “Jews = Israel = evil” has metastasized from an incorrect thought to a violent ideology.

Yaron Lischinsky was days away from proposing to his girlfriend, Sarah Milgrim. Instead, they were murdered outside a Jewish museum.

Is it possible for progressives to hold two thoughts at once: that Israel’s actions in Gaza deserve scrutiny and that Jewish people around the world must be protected from collective blame and violence? This is the point where “critique” curdles into cruelty and where politics becomes persecution. It is a tragedy that the deaths of two innocent embassy staffers must serve as yet another reminder: you do not fight perceived injustice by becoming unjust.

Unless these progressives reject the lazy, lethal condemnation of Judaism and Zionism, we will keep seeing bodies on the pavement, more names turned into hashtags, and more vigils lit for people murdered by the deluded and deranged. The wild conspiracies — ancient, mendacious myths about Jewish control — have fused with a deeper cultural decay in the West. A nihilism that poses as activism. A blind, vengeful rage rebranded as resistance. Antisemitism now hides behind the language of liberation. And, like a virus, it mutates, recruits, and infects new hosts. It is a reflection of a people in an identity crisis of their own making who have rejected their own roots, their own creed, their own traditions, their own foundational myths. They are projecting this onto the Jewish state.

Jewish people have always been a convenient target. They’re both hyper-visible and deeply misunderstood. They’re stereotyped as powerful and marginalized at the same time. In America, they make up just over 2% of the population, but the hate directed at them is wildly disproportionate. When bombs fall in Gaza, it’s Jews in Amsterdam, New York, and Melbourne who are spat on, stalked, and beaten. That’s not politics. That’s tribal bloodlust.

Progressives can condemn Netanyahu without justifying bullets. They can mourn Palestinian lives without justifying hate crimes. But to pretend that antisemitism isn’t spiking in America is delusion. What happened outside the museum in D.C. was not an isolated event. It was the logical endpoint of a culture that’s marinating in self-hatred.

The shooter in D.C. didn’t help Palestine. He brought shame to their cause. And as for the activists defending or downplaying this atrocity? You can have love for Palestinians without hating Jews. And if you can’t? You are part of the problem.