On May 21, after a peace-themed event at the Capital Jewish Museum in the heart of Washington DC, a radical anti-Israel activist shot and killed two young Israeli Embassy staffers, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim. The shooter, Elias Rodriguez, reportedly told bystanders and police that “I did it for Gaza!” and chanted “Free, free Palestine.” A social media post attributed to Rodriguez was titled “Escalate for Gaza, Bring the War Home,” and accused Israel of genocide.
The first problem with most media coverage of the murders is that Rodriguez is routinely referred to as “pro-Palestinian” when he is in fact anti-Israel and probably anti-Jewish. His dangerously distorted view of the conflict, no doubt inflamed by biased, false media coverage, would only sentence Palestinians to endless, fruitless violence against Israelis and Jews, triggering senseless deaths on both sides.
Rodriguez and those who largely share his beliefs are eager to fight to the last Palestinian. These activists – and the reporters who misinform them, whether from Al Jazeera or the Washington Post – are entirely ignorant of the fact that a “free Palestine” has been offered many times, including in 1947 when the UN passed Resolution 181 (the Partition Resolution), in 2000 at Camp David under the Clinton Parameters, and in 2008 in the Olmert proposal to PA leader Mahmud Abbas. In each case the Palestinians refused to accept statehood if it meant also accepting a state of Israel. For more details see Palestinians Rejected Statehood Three Times, Claim Frustration — with Israel.
Considering the youthful, attractive and politically progressive victims, it’s not surprising that some of the media coverage was unbiased and even sympathetic. One example was the New York Times report Slaying Outside D.C. Jewish Museum Is Part of Global Surge in Antisemitism, which even referred to “Hamas terrorists” and quoted a number of experts on the surging antisemitism since the October 7 attacks.
But there were also egregious aspects of the reporting. Perhaps the most shocking was a Washington Post tweet, since deleted, that read “The killings of two Israelis embassy staffers amplify confusion felt since the Oct. 7,2023 attacks about where Jews belong:”
The tweet was heavily criticized for daring to raise the question of where Jews belong, with many replies saying Jews belong where anyone else belongs. While the tweet was deleted and replaced, the article it linked to still has the same statement in the subhead: “The killings of two Israeli Embassy staffers amplify the confusion felt since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks about where Jews belong.”
The Post report was otherwise not remarkable, and perhaps even sympathetic, except that the authors did seem to seek out Jews who would hand-wring, such as a Dallas-area Rabbi and “interfaith activist,” who said that her worry was:
… that politicians would use the museum killings as an excuse to limit free speech. “I do not see that those tactics have worked in the past and don’t know why we would think they could work to keep Jews, Israelis, or anyone else safer in the future,” she said.
For now, she was focusing on an event she’s been planning, entitled: “Two Peoples, One Land: What Americans can do to promote peace in Israel and Palestine.”
In other words, the perfect interview subject for the Washington Post and kindred outlets. The media – whether it’s the Washington Post, or the New York Times, NPR, the BBC, the Guardian etc. – seems absolutely unwilling to look in the mirror and accept its own culpability for inflaming anti-Jewish and anti-Israel hatred by running endless propaganda, such as taking seriously Hamas casualty figures in Gaza, or false claims that in a few days 14,000 babies in Gaza will die of starvation because of Israel.
That the same media can then report with some sympathy on brutal murders in Washington DC in no way absolves their own responsibility for helping to create the environment in which such violence can flourish.