Antisemitism

Boulder and Inflection Points

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A terrorist attack in Boulder. A man, an illegal immigrant from Egypt, attacked participants of a weekly demonstration held in support of Israeli hostages. The man apparently used what was described as a “makeshift flamethrower” to injure six, two critically. He could be heard yelling “Free Palestine” during the attack.

I wrote two weeks ago about the murder of two Israeli Embassy staffers on a DC street. Last month, somebody set fire to the official residence of the Pennsylvania governor, causing the emergency evacuation of Governor Shapiro and his family.

“Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.”

As I wrote two weeks ago after the public murder of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim in DC:

Rodriguez also struck at the official presence of Israel in the United States, a country founded specifically to protect Jews after millennia of persecution. Israeli embassies have been the targets in other countries for just this reason, they are the global public symbols of a hated state.

Now even in DC, Israeli Embassy staffers will have to live in fear of going out in public.

Because of this attack, the public presence of Jewish life in America will be lessened and what remains will have to be fortified.

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Keeping Receipts

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I’m going to keep at this because I’m going to be keeping receipts.

If the past 10 years have taught me anything, it’s to keep receipts.

Wednesday night, less than 72 hours ago, two members of a foreign embassy were murdered in DC. In and of itself this is a major scandal. This is something that happens in places like Beirut in the 1980s, not on a downtown street in our nation’s capital.

This wasn’t just another DC murder; those usually happen in Southeast DC if you are keeping score. This was an assassination. The killer traveled half-way across the country with the sole intent of killing people from the country in question, people part of a religion that has been the target of persecution and state-organized killing for millennia.

I say assassination, but really it was also an execution. Apparently the murderer waited outside an event held at a building identified with said religion, because that’s where he knew he would find the right people to kill. He then selected the two victims, a young couple who were about to be engaged, and shot them on the street.

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A Symbol of Hate

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Last night in DC two Israelis, staffers at the Israel Embassy, were gunned down outside of the Capital Jewish Museum after an event that was meant to foster unity and celebrate Jewish heritage.

The murders are a personal tragedy. The dead will be grieved by family and friends. As with all people who die too young, their deaths will create a hole in the lives of their loved ones that will never be filled.

Their murders are also a larger tragedy in that the victims were a couple about to be engaged; most people understand through personal experience the rite of passage engagement represents, and the meaning of a couple killed just before they started their life together.

Given that tragedy and what this will become, let us mention their names so that we know them first and foremost as fellow human beings, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim. I did not know them before today, but I wish I did.

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