Rabbi Mark Rosenberg, director of the Jewish burial society Chesed Shel Emes and law enforcement chief chaplain of Florida, cleans blood off the sidewalk at the shooting location outside of the Capital Jewish Museum on May 22, 2025, in Washington, DC. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
On the evening of May 21, 2025, shortly after 9:00 pm, Elias Rodriguez, 30, of Chicago, Illinois, allegedly shot and killed two people as they were leaving an AJC (American Jewish Committee) Young Diplomats event at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington D.C. As he was taken into custody, Rodriguez shouted, “Free, free Palestine." The victims were later identified as Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, a couple who worked at the Israeli Embassy in Washington.
An online manifesto posted on X lays out the reasons for the attack. The ADL Center on Extremism has been able to connect the alleged suspect, with a high degree of certainty, to the X account and the manifesto, shared under the heading “Escalate For Gaza, Bring The War Home” — slogans commonly used by anti-Israel activists, particularly in more extreme, militant spaces.
Extreme Anti-Israel Beliefs
The text of Rodriguez’s alleged manifesto reflected an apparent trajectory of radicalization as the author stated that non-violent protests against Israel’s actions in Gaza have been insufficient and that the “perpetrators and abettors” of genocide have “forfeited their humanity.” The author noted that “nonviolent protest in the opening weeks of the genocide seemed to signal some sort of turning point…But thus far the rhetoric has not amounted to much.” It then went on to praise Aaron Bushnell, the 25-year-old active-duty United States Airman who died after setting himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., on February 25, 2024.
The manifesto concluded with a section about “the morality of armed demonstration,” in which the author commented that “the action would have been morally justified taken 11 years ago during Protective Edge [Israel’s name for its military operation in the 2014 Gaza war], around the time I personally became acutely aware of our brutal conduct in Palestine,” but acknowledged that such an action would have seemed “illegible” or “insane” to “most Americans” at the time. He concluded that now, in 2025, armed action seems like “the only sane thing to do.” The author signed off with: "Free Palestine, Elias Rodriguez."
Additional posts made by the X account over the past 20 months echo similarly extreme anti-Israel sentiments, such as language in one post declaring “Death To Israel” and in another calling a Jewish individual a “zionazi [sic].” The account also shared openly pro-terror content, including reposting videos of former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah; commenting, “God bless them,” on a post about Houthi missiles launched toward Tel Aviv; and reposting a tweet after the 2024 U.S. presidential election that read, “Don’t Blame Me, I Voted For Hamas.”
Background on Rodriguez
Based on posts shared on Rodriguez’s alleged X account, he appears to have participated in anti-Israel protests in Chicago following Hamas’s October 7, 2023, terror attack on Israel. In one such post, the X account shared footage from a large protest held in the city on October 21, 2023.
Research by the ADL Center on Extremism shows that Rodriguez was previously affiliated with two prominent anti-Israel organizations, ANSWER Coalition and the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), and participated in multiple ANSWER and PSL protests in Chicago from late 2017 through early 2018.
Rodriguez, identified as a member of ANSWER’s Chicago chapter, speaks to reporters during a protest against the city’s bid for an Amazon headquarters in January 2018. (screenshot/Newsy/Scripps News)
Rodriguez spoke at an October 2017 protest organized by ANSWER, the People’s Congress of Resistance and Black Lives Matter Women of Faith, demanding justice for Laquan McDonald, who was shot and killed by police in Chicago in 2014. In an article published about the protest on the PSL website “Liberation News,” Rodriquez was described as being affiliated with PSL and photographs show Rodriquez holding an ANSWER sign.
Rodriguez also participated in a series of ANSWER protests against the city of Chicago’s bid to become the site of a new Amazon headquarters. In local news media coverage of a January 2018 protest on this issue, he was identified as a member of ANSWER.
Rodriguez (fifth from right) is seen holding an ANSWER Coalition sign in a photograph published by the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) on its website “Liberation News” in an article about an October 2017 protest demanding justice for Laquan McDonald and criticizing Chicago’s bid for an Amazon headquarters. (Screenshot/Liberation News)
Reactions
In the hours after the D.C. shooting on Wednesday, PSL attempted to distance itself from Rodriguez, posting from its national account: “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.”
Anti-Israel activists quickly responded to the shooting, with many celebrating the violence and attempting to justify it. Masar Badil, a transnational anti-Israel organization connected to the terror-affiliated group Samidoun, wrote that the shooting “targeting employees of the ‘Israeli’ embassy, is a natural consequence of the Zionist entity’s crimes in the Gaza Strip.” Charlotte Kates, international coordinator of Samidoun, responded: “It should surprise...no one at all that people will act when there is no accountability whatsoever imposed upon that genocidal regime...Genocide has to have consequences.”
Unity of Fields (formerly Palestine Action U.S.), a far-left anti-Zionist “direct action network” that supports the targeting of “Zionist” individuals and institutions, retweeted Kates’s response and additionally commented: “We ain’t condemning shit” and “FREE ELIAS RODRIGUEZ!”
The group also published a zine of Rodriguez’s alleged manifesto — emphasizing his use of the “Escalate For Gaza, Bring The War Home” language, alongside an image of a gun — and referred to him as a “political prisoner,” as federal authorities investigate the attack.
A police officer stands at the site of a fatal shooting at the Capital Jewish Museum on May 21, 2025, in Washington, DC. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
The Bronx Anti-War Coalition, a radical New York-based anti-Israel group, wrote on X: “What Elias Rodriguez did is the highest expression of anti-Zionism.” In a similar post to its Telegram channel, the group added: “We need more Elias Rodriguez in the world.”
Resistance News Network (RNN) and Palestine News Network (PNN), extreme anti-Zionist groups that also post content praising anti-Israel terror and violence, also expressed support for the shooting. In the popular RNN Telegram channel, hundreds of people reacted with celebratory emojis to the post announcing the attack.
Unsurprisingly, far-right extremist spaces have also responded to the shooting by celebrating the deaths of the victims. Some cheered their perceived enemies fighting each other: as one white supremacist wrote, “Rejoice when your enemies kill each other.” When the shooter’s identity was announced, some far-right extremists took the opportunity to further spread anti-immigrant sentiments, despite no evidence that the shooter was an immigrant, while others joked about their identity. One white supremacist wrote regarding the shooter, “Doing the job Americans won’t yadda yadda yadda.”
Various social media users, including some prominent antisemitic and anti-Israel influencers, reacted to the shooting by quickly spreading unfounded conspiracy theories, including alleging that the shooting was a false flag operation. Some also claimed that this attack would be used to make Israel and Jews the "victim" again.
Broader Context
This latest attack comes amid an unprecedentedly high threat environment for Jewish communities in the U.S. and across the world. Jewish institutions, including synagogues, community centers and museums, have been the targets of 1,702 antisemitic incidents in 2024, according to ADL’s annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents in the U.S. Of those incidents, 631 were related to Israel, including 86 which occurred at anti-Israel rallies in the vicinity of those institutions.
This is the eighth terrorist plot or attack targeting Jews, Zionists, or Jewish institutions since July 2024:
April 13, 2025. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Cody Balmer allegedly broke into Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s residence in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, set multiple fires, then called 911 and referred to Shapiro as a “monster” and blamed him for Palestinian deaths in the Israel-Hamas war.
December 28 , 2024. Gainesville, Florida: The FBI arrested Forrest Pemberton of Gainesville, Florida, and subsequently charged him in a plot to travel to the south Florida offices of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a pro-Israel advocacy group, with the intent of harming people there, possibly in a suicide attack.
December 17, 2024. Fairfax, Virginia: FBI agents arrested an Egyptian citizen and George Mason University student, Abdullah Ezzeldin Taha Mohamed Hassan, and charged him in a plot to perpetrate a mass casualty attack at Israeli consulate in New York City.
October 26, 2024, Chicago, Illinois: Sidi Mohamed Abdallahi shot a Jewish man walking to his synagogue and then opened fire on responding police and paramedics. Local authorities later filed felony hate crime and terrorism charges against Abdallahi, saying that evidence from his phone indicated that the suspect planned the shooting and intentionally sought to target Jews. Abdallah was found dead of apparent suicide in his jail cell in November 2024.
September 4, 2024, New York, New York: As part of a two-country investigation, Canadian authorities arrested a Pakistani citizen, Muhammad Shahzeb Khan, while trying to cross the border into the United States, allegedly as part of a planned mass shooting against a Jewish target in New York to support ISIS.
August 14, 2024, Orlando, Florida: Hashem Younis Hashem Hnaihen, a Jordanian citizen, was arrested in August 2024, on suspicion that he sought to target businesses that he believed were supportive of Israel. Hnaihen pled guilty on December 20, 2024, to four counts of threatening to use explosives and one count of destruction of an energy facility.
July 16, 2024, New York, New York: In an international terrorist incident, federal authorities charged Michael Chkhikvishvili, a citizen of the nation of Georgia, with soliciting hate crimes and mass violence. According to authorities, Chkhikvishvili attempted to recruit others, including an undercover law enforcement officer, to commit a mass casualty attack in New York City. He also allegedly encouraged bombings, arson and poisonings against Jews, racial minorities and homeless people.
