A grim milestone

The assault against Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim marks the return of far-left terrorism to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its arrival in the US.

Jonathan Spyer | May 29, 2025

Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim.  (Photo by Eagle003 – Facebook, CC BY-SA 4.0)

The murders of Israeli diplomats Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. by Elias Rodriguez on May 21 represent the return of a once quite widespread phenomenon which over the last half century had largely disappeared.

The phenomenon in question is the direct involvement of Western far leftists in violence against Israeli and Jewish targets. The implications of its return are quite grave, given the current wide appeal for radical left ideas among a section of educated young people in the West.

It’s therefore important to carefully consider what has brought about the largely unpredicted reappearance of this particular socio-political malignancy, and what might be done to reduce or mitigate its impact.

First, some history. The active involvement of supporters of the Western left in anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli violence began in the late 1960s and had largely concluded by the 1980s. For a while, it achieved a considerable level of intensity.

Militants of the German New Left carried out a failed bombing of a Jewish community center in Berlin in 1969, in one of the first occurrences. More followed. Among the most famous practitioners was the Venezuelan communist Ilyich Ramirez Sanchez, dubbed “Carlos the Jackal” by the Western media of the day.

In the context of his activities in support of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Sanchez carried out a bungled assassination attempt on Marcus Sieff, the chairman of Marks and Spencer, at the latter’s London home in 1973.

The apogee of a former generation of left involvement in Palestinian terrorism came in 1976, with the involvement of Frankfurt left-wing activists Wilfried Bose and Brigitte Kuhlmann in the hijacking of Air France Flight 139 by the PFLP to the Entebbe Airport in Uganda.  This incident famously ended with the killing of the hijackers, including the two Germans, in a rescue mission conducted by Israeli commandos.

But by the 1980s, with the decline of the Western New Left, this phenomenon had largely died out.  A few desultory subsequent incidents occurred. German far leftists tried to bomb a bus carrying Soviet Jewish emigrants in Budapest in 1991. This was the last major recorded incident of its kind. Even at the time, it seemed like the last twitch of a not especially lamented corpse.

And now, here we are. The original article, in all its murderousness, back again. A young Jewish couple, brutally executed by 21 rounds from a handgun. And the perpetrator, waving his absurd Jordanian keffiyeh, yelling, “Free free Palestine” and “There is only one solution—Intifada, revolution,” as he is taken away.

So what has happened that, after a 40-year hiatus, supporters of the Western radical left are now killing Jews again, on the streets of a Western city?  And by the way, there is something entirely new about the murders. This is the first time that the US has witnessed the deliberate targeting and murder of Jews by an American far-leftist on US soil.  A grim milestone.

A few points.  Firstly, no one who has been watching the agitation against Israel in Western cities and on Western campuses over the last 19 months should be surprised.

Violent incitement and violence against property will eventually lead to violence against people. The likes of Elias Rodriguez don’t arrive by themselves.

What began with the normalization of absurd charges of “genocide” against Israel’s defensive war effort, continued with marches past synagogues, and chanted threats of violence against Jewish communities, and then progressed to attacks on property carried out by groups such as Palestine Action in the UK, was bound to lead to something like what has just been witnessed outside the Capital Jewish Museum.  As sure as night follows day.

Secondly, Rodriguez does not seem to have been an isolated self-radicalizer,  absorbing messages on his computer.  Rather, he was an activist. The killer of Lischinsky and Milgrim, it has now become apparent, was hitherto involved with something called the Party for Socialism and Liberation, in the Chicago area.  He was also affiliated with the ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) coalition.

Both these groups are part of a loose nexus of US-based far left organizations. ANSWER has financial links, in turn, with a body called the Progress Unity Fund, from which it has received support, and with one Roy Neville Singham, a Shanghai-based businessman noted for his support for radical left-wing causes in the United States and for his links to the Chinese Communist Party and government.

This was the milieu from which the killer emerged. This, too, has the feeling of anachronism about it.  But in this area, as in many others in recent times, we should get used to the idea that what seemed to be safely and harmlessly quarantined in the history books can no longer be assumed to be so.

Lastly, I should declare a personal interest. Yaron Lischinsky, the day before he was murdered, attended a conference at which I was also present, organized by the Middle East Forum in Washington.

He came to my panel on Syria. I recognized his face, with a start, when reports of the killings began to come out.  I was a couple of miles from the museum when the shootings occurred.

All of which I recall not for the purposes of self dramatization, but to underline three central points: those engaged on behalf of Israel and Jews are aware that the bullets fired last week at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington DC, though they struck and killed Yaron and Sarah, were aimed at all of us.

If history is any guide, they will not be the last ones fired. And the ones doing the firing, those standing behind them, and the newly awakened madness that motivates them will not prevail.