NP View: When progressives become indistinguishable from Islamists

National Post

24-05-2025

Video of Elias Rodriguez — the suspect charged in the shooting deaths of two Israeli Embassy employees outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday — bears striking resemblance to scenes that have been witnessed at anti-Israel protests on Canadian streets and university campuses in recent years. The senseless murder of a young couple solely because they were Israeli and taking part in an event at a Jewish museum is the logical conclusion of calls to Globalize the Intifada.
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Although Rodriguez was clean cut and not trying to hide his identity, he was seen waving a keffiyeh and began the now familiar chant of 'free, free Palestine' as he was being led away by police. A manifesto posted online after the shooting, purportedly written by Rodriguez, reiterates many of the usual talking points against Israel, but laments that, 'Thus far the rhetoric has not amounted to much.' Rodriguez then attempts to justify 'the morality of armed demonstration,' and claims others will understand that what he did was 'the only sane thing to do.' The social media post was accompanied by a call to 'Escalate For Gaza' and 'Bring The War Home.'
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Notably, Rodriguez does not appear to be a radicalized Muslim or a recent immigrant from a Middle Eastern country with high rates of antisemitism. He more closely resembles your run-of-the-mill social justice warrior: the type of person who worked as an 'oral history researcher' on African-American communities at an educational non-profit; attended Black Lives Matter protests and other anti-capitalist demonstrations; gave an interview to a socialist magazine lamenting how Amazon was responsible for the 'whitening of Seattle'; and had past ties with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, an anti-Israel communist group.
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According to his manifesto, Rodriguez wasn't even aware of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict until 2014. In the same fashion as the kids who were radicalized in mosques after 9/11 and went on to fight with the Taliban and ISIS, Rodriguez appears to have transformed from a fairly typical American lefty into a cold-blooded killer in just over a decade. In too many cases, the progressives have become indistinguishable from the Islamists.
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While we don't know how Rodriguez — who has a BA in English from the University of Illinois Chicago — was radicalized, those who have been paying attention to the antisemitism and anti-Israel bias that has come to dominate universities, the media and left-wing narratives should not be surprised that it eventually led to blood being spilled in the streets of a western capital.
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At the encampment set up at the University of Toronto last spring, for example, signs reading Revolution Until Victory, Glory to All Martyrs, This is the Intfada (sic) and Globalize Resistance were commonplace. Based on the clueless statements made by some students during last year's encampment craze, it's clear that at least some of them did not fully appreciate the meaning of these phrases, or the history of the Middle East conflict. Those people now need to take a hard look in the mirror, because the deaths of Sarah Milgrim, 26, and Yaron Lischinsky, 30, is the fruit of their labour.