Actions, we know, have consequences. And a committed Marxist's cold-blooded murder of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, D.C. Wednesday night was the natural and inevitable consequence of a conscientious, yearslong campaign to dehumanize Jews and otherize all supporters of the world's only Jewish state.
Seriously, what did you think was going to happen?
Some of President Donald Trump's more colorful all-caps and exclamation mark-filled social media posts evince an impending jackboot, we're sometimes told. Hold aside, for now, columnist Salena Zito's apt 2016 quip about taking Trump seriously but not literally. Words either have meaning or they don't. And many left-wing Americans have, for a long time now, argued that they have tremendous meaning. How often, as the concept of the "microaggression" and its campus "safe space" corollary took off last decade, were we told that "words are violence"? (I'll answer: a lot!)
So are we really not supposed to take seriously the clear calls for Jewish genocide that have erupted on American campuses and throughout American streets since the Hamas pogrom of Oct. 7, 2023? Are we really supposed to believe that chants such as "globalize the intifada," "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free," and "there is only one solution, intifada revolution" are vague and open to competing interpretations -- devoid of any discernible meaning?
That doesn't even pass the laugh test. Or perhaps more accurately, if morbidly, it doesn't even pass the murder test.
When peacefully demonstrating pro-Israel Jewish American Paul Kessler was killed by a pro-Palestinian thug in Thousand Oaks, California, on Nov. 5, 2023, that is what "intifada revolution" looks like in practice. When Israeli woman Tzeela Gez was murdered by jihadists while en route to the hospital to deliver her baby earlier this month, that was what "from the river to the sea" looks like in practice. And when two beautiful young Israeli embassy staffers were executed while leaving an event this week at Washington's Capital Jewish Museum, that is what "globalize the intifada" looks like in practice.
Really, what did you think was going to happen?
Indeed, it is the easily foreseeable nature of Wednesday night's slayings that is perhaps the most tragic part of it all. The suspect in the deaths of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim left behind a handy manifesto laying out a clear political motivation. This was not a random drive-by shooting. Hardly. This was a deliberate act -- an act of domestic terrorism. And the charged assassin, Elias Rodriguez, has a long history of involvement in far-left activist causes. And while he clearly sought to murder Jews, the fact that both victims -- a couple set to be betrothed just next week in Jerusalem -- were apparently Christian only underscores the "globalize" part of "globalize the intifada."
Zito had it right back in 2016: Trump's social media posts shoulf be taken seriously, not literally. But when it comes to the murderous, genocidal clamoring for Jewish and Israeli blood that has become increasingly ubiquitous ever since the Jews themselves suffered their single bloodiest day since the Third Reich, such antisemitic and anti-Israel words must be taken both seriously and literally.
A previous generation of lawmakers once urged Americans to fight the terrorists "over there" so that they can't harm us "here." How quaint! The discomfiting reality in the year 2025 is this: The radicals, both homegrown and foreign-born alike, are already here. There are monsters in our midst.
And those monsters are not limited to jihadists. Domestic terrorists these days come from all backgrounds. Because the murder of two Israeli diplomats from a committed Marxist is yet another reminder (not that we needed it): Politically motivated violence in the contemporary United States is not an equivalent problem on both the left and the right.
In 2012, Floyd Lee Corkins attempted to shoot up the socially conservative Family Research Council because he heard it was "anti-gay." In 2017, James Hodgkinson shot up the Republican congressional baseball team a few weeks after posting on Facebook that Trump is a "traitor" and threat to "our democracy." In 2022, Nicholas Roske flew cross-country to try to assassinate Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and thus prevent Roe v. Wade from being overturned. Earlier this year, anti-Elon Musk activists burned and looted Teslas -- and assaulted Tesla drivers -- because of Musk's Trump administration work with the cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency. And who can forget Luigi Mangione, the left-anarchist who murdered UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in cold blood last December due to his hatred of the "greedy" American health care system.
Both "sides" are not equally culpable here. They just aren't. Israel supporters in America aren't out there gunning down people waving the Palestine Liberation Organization flag. Nor are capitalists out there gunning down socialists.
There is a real darkness out there in certain -- increasingly widespread -- pockets of the American activist Left. Sure, parts of the Right are also lost at the moment -- but this is not an apples-to-apples comparison.
Regardless, the violence must end. And we must stop treating open calls for murder or genocide as morally acceptable "speech." Let's pull ourselves back from the brink before more blood is shed.