Shock on streets of DC after Israeli embassy staff shooting: ‘It's horrifying'

The Guardian

22-05-2025

The sombre mood in the streets around Washington's Capital Jewish Museum on Thursday morning seemed to be aptly caught by the cast-iron grey skies and lightly falling drizzle.
Roughly 12 hours after a gunman shot dead two Israeli embassy employees near the museum's front entrance, residents and workers in the city's Judiciary Square district were grappling with the sudden explosion of violence. Many had assumed they might have a certain immunity thanks to the neighboring presence of the Metropolitan police headquarters and Washington's FBI field office. Both are situated on nearby streets.
The sense of shock was summed up by Laurie Walborn, 62, who turned up for work at a children's law centre, nextdoor to the museum, only to find the entire block cordoned off by police tape and forced to make a detour.
'It's horrifying,' she said. 'I have walked by the museum a lot of times and never thought about it. This country is in trouble. The climate in the country is such that it's now OK to hate someone and I am afraid the Trump administration, from the way it is talking to representatives of foreign governments, is encouraging it. There is a pervasive feeling of hate.'
Tricia, 47, a ceramic artist out walking her dogs, described hearing the police response from her home three blocks from the museum. She initially relished moving from her previous home in Los Angeles to an area close to Washington's historic government district after her husband was offered a job in a non-profit group specializing in privacy law.
'I heard the really loud response just after 9pm,' she said. 'You often hear police sirens around here when it's part of a motorcade telling other drivers to get out the way. But this time, the noise was constant and focused on the one place. It was frightening.
'We love living in DC and we thought we were on the precipice of something exciting but this is not what we had in mind and things haven't turned out as we imagined,' she said. Citing the 'political atmosphere', she said: 'Right now, it feels like humanity is emboldened to do things that, as a society, we should be afraid to do.'
Those near the scene on the morning after the attack included Jewish people who had come to pay their respects.
One, a 19-year-old high school student who wanted to remain anonymous, turned up because he was close to people at the Israeli embassy who knew the two victims, Yaron Lischinsky, 30, and his girlfriend, Sarah Milgrim.
'I know people who knew them very well,' he said. 'My best friend's dad is high up in the Israeli embassy and he worked with them. I'm the type of person who wants to pursue the truth, even if it paints my own people in a bad light.
'But seeing people coming here full of hate, not knowing the full picture, really troubles me. The person who carried out this attack was screaming 'free Palestine', yet this event was being held to try and get more aid into Gaza.'
The suspect in Wednesday night's attack, was named by police as Elias Rodriguez, 30, from Chicago. He was said to have entered the museum after carrying out the shooting and initially mistaken by confused workers as a victim.
An eyewitness, Katie Kalisher, told Fox News that workers had heard 'some gunshots and we didn't immediately understand what was going on'.
She added: 'A man came in, and he was covered in rain and he said 'call the police'.
We thought he was just walking around, and had witnessed a crime, so the security guards let him inside. One of my friends even said to him 'are you OK, can I get you some water?' And he was like, 'yeah, sure, that would be great'.
'And he's like playing dumb with me, asking what kind of museum is this? And I told him it's a Jewish museum.'
After that, Kalisher said, the man reached into his bag, pulled out a keffiyeh, and said: 'I did this for Gaza. Free Palestine.'
The museum is housed in a former synagogue, constructed in 1876, that is believed to be the oldest surviving synagogue building in Washington. It was moved to its current location in 1969 after being threatened with demolition and restored as a museum.
It regularly hosts exhibitions depicting Jewish life in the US capital. Recently it opened an exhibitions exploring the history of LGBTQ+ Jews in the city.
Jeffrey Elikan, 59, a lawyer, arrived on the scene on Thursday after being alerted by his local rabbi, who had asked members of his congregation to visit the site and say a prayer for the victims.
He attributed the attack to hatred and antisemitism, which he said Americans had to reject.
'I'm sure there's fault across the political spectrum, on the left and on the right, but fundamentally, this is something that I feel Americans need to reject. This is supposed to be a country of tolerance and a safe haven for people,' he said, describing how his father and grandparents escaped to the US from Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
He added: 'This kind of of action should be condemned universally across the political spectrum, whether people support Israel's war in Gaza, or whether their sympathies [lies] with the Gazan population.'