A Dangerous Disguise for Anti-Semitism

[Mosby]

(THIS IS THE JEWISH GROUP)

When Hamas stormed across the Gaza border on October 7, 2023, it knew exactly what it was doing. The group had detailed maps of nearby Israeli military bases and forces, and quickly overran them. But the terrorist group did not stop there. Instead, Hamas advanced into civilian communities, butchering and burning whole families, shooting children in front of their parents, and parents in front of their children. Gunmen executed a grandmother in her home and uploaded the video to her Facebook page for friends and family to see. After discovering a music festival in the vicinity, the group diverted its paragliding fighters to massacre and kidnap the attendees. “I killed 10 Jews with my own hands,” one Hamas member ecstatically told his parents over the phone.

As it turned out, the Israeli military was not the primary target of Hamas. It was just in the way of the real target: any and all Jewish people in the land of Israel. The terrorist group’s anti-Zionism turned out to be a flimsy cover for its anti-Semitism.

Last night, another assailant used the Palestinian struggle as a pretext to harm Jews. In Washington, D.C., a man named Elias Rodriguez allegedly shot and killed two people as they were exiting an event at the Capital Jewish Museum. There is much we still don’t know about this terrible tragedy, but we do know that Rodriguez has been charged with first-degree murder and other crimes (he has not entered a plea), and that witnesses say he confessed to the crime, declaring, “I did it for Gaza.”

The victims of this atrocity happened to be staff members at the Israeli embassy. But the gathering they attended was not an Israeli-embassy event, and it was not held in the Israeli embassy: It was a gathering of Jews at a Jewish institution. Rodriguez went to an American Jewish Committee event for young professionals and allegedly executed two people leaving the venue. “Police believe the shooter targeted the event but had not singled out any individual before arriving,” The Washington Post reported. It seems to have been mere happenstance that left the Israeli-embassy staffers dead and not someone else.

https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2025/05/israeli-embassy-aides-shooting-dc/682912/