In the Jewish religion, we say of the dead: “May their memory be for a blessing.” This injunction encapsulates the hope that even the memory of the departed will help the living in some way: inspiring us, teaching us, warning us, impelling us to bravery. Most often, the blessing of someone’s memory extends to a small, close-knit circle of good friends and family. Sometimes, because of a person’s particularly good deeds, particularly good character, or particularly influential role in life, the blessings of their memory radiate out beyond this small circle. Rarely, however, does the blessing of a person’s memory touch a whole country.
We never met Sarah Milgrim or Yaron Lischinsky, the young couple who were murdered May 21 in Washington, D.C., outside the Capital Jewish Museum after attending a gathering of the American Jewish Committee. But we hope that the memory of these two people—struck down in the prime of their lives (she was 26 and he was 30)—will be a blessing for every American of good faith and open heart. And it can be, if we’re all willing to face facts, to stand up for what we know to be true, and to rise up against the dark forces that are closing in on us.
Milgrim and Lischinsky are dead because someone finally answered the incessant calls of Hamas supporters to “globalize the intifada.” The meaning of the word intifada is no mystery: It’s a reference to armed violence—harkening back to the Palestinian terrorism of the First and Second Intifadas in Israel. This is what globalizing the intifada looks like—dead people outside a Jewish museum after a Jewish event on American soil. This is what comes from years of our collective failure to enforce serious consequences when so-called peaceful protesters on U.S. college campuses take over buildings and block Jewish students from getting to class, and when antisemitic agitators spit on Jewish kids, chase and harass Jewish women, and spray graffiti on Jewish businesses, Jewish homes, and Jewish places of worship. Little by little, the stakes are raised. Little by little, the supporters of terror push and push and see how much they can get away with—until Jews are being gunned down in the street just for being Jews.
Elias Rodriguez is accused of pulling the trigger the other night, but we all must understand who loaded the gun. Anyone who has been paying attention to the “Free Palestine” movement, whose slogan Rodriguez chanted after he murdered Milgrim and Lischinsky, could have seen this coming. The whole movement sustains itself—intentionally—on the glorification of violence against Jews. Attacking Israel becomes attacking Zionists. Attacking Zionists becomes attacking Jews. This is a feature of the movement, not a bug.
“Societies that persecute Jews are societies that are sick and dying. Societies that allow the moral rot of Jew hatred to proliferate are societies on their way out of the pages of history.”
Milgrim and Lischinsky are dead because of the false accusation that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza. Anyone who examines the facts fairly will learn that (even using Hamas’ artificially inflated casualty figures) Israel has maintained the lowest civilian-to-militant death ratio in the history of modern urban warfare. And it has done this while fighting a cynical terrorist regime that refuses to wear uniforms and whose strategy revolves around intentionally placing its military infrastructure on top of, inside of, and underneath schools, hospitals, and homes. Whatever one thinks of the Israel-Hamas war, the claim of genocide is ridiculous on its face.
Ridiculous, but not funny. And not surprising. Time and again throughout history, the blood libels come like clockwork, and like clockwork the killings of Jews follow. We think it important to speak now because we believe our country—the country we love, the greatest force for good the world has ever known—is at a precipice: We can decide now, as members of a free and fair society, to stand up to the people who are ripping down the posters of Jewish hostages, to speak out against the masked and hooded people marching with signs advocating resistance “by any means necessary,” and to condemn the people who are actively providing aid, comfort, and incitement to the murderers who intentionally slaughtered, raped, injured, and burned more than a thousand Jews on October 7, 2023. Or we can watch silently as we go from two Jewish murders to 10, from 10 to 100, and from 100 to the spiraling Jew hatred of a pogrom.
To our non-Jewish friends: You have been there with us from the beginning, and we ask that you continue to stand with us now. We know you recognize how important it is to stand with the Jewish people because you have always understood a basic truth. Societies that persecute Jews are societies that are sick and dying. Societies that allow the moral rot of Jew hatred to proliferate are societies on their way out of the pages of history. Consider the Russian Empire, which survived for fewer than 15 years after it perpetrated the Kishinev pogrom against Jews in 1903. Or the Germany of Kristallnacht that was gone in seven. Or maybe the best examples: Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Iran expelled hundreds of thousands of Jews only to devolve into failed states and terror havens, ravaged by civil war. So, not because we are Jews, but because we are Americans—we beseech you to help us call out and root out the moral decay of antisemitism in our country. It is the rot in the wooden framework of our house. And, if we’re not careful, it’ll bring the whole edifice tumbling down.
To our Jewish friends: We ask you to be brave, to be outspoken, to be resolute. This is the time to raise our voices. Now, not later. This is the time to call on everyone of good will and to engage them in our struggle. Now, not later. This is the time for moral clarity, for facing hard truths, and for speaking them out loud. There are, even today, people marching on American streets under the banner of Hamas and Hezbollah, proudly displaying the red terror triangle, and repeating lies that soften the ground for future attacks against Jews. We must call these despicable acts out for what they are: a coordinated and antisemitic movement to intimidate Jews, to silence Jews, and to encourage the killing of Jews. How can anyone be expected to stand with us if we won’t stand for ourselves? If you don’t want your sons and daughters shot dead on a public street by a man infected with the catchy slogans of an avowedly anti-American, anti-Western, anti-Jewish movement, then you can’t just sit on the sidelines any longer.
May the memory of Sarah Lynn Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky be for a blessing.
