Two Israeli embassy staffers killed amid a rise in antisemitism

They were a beautiful couple. who came to enjoy an evening in Washington's cultural center. That's Israeli ambassador to the United States, Yehiel Leiter, at a press conference Wednesday night. And the couple he is talking about is Jeroen Leshinsky and Sarah Milgram. the pair was gunned down and killed in front of the capital jewish museum on wednesday night

Lashinsky and Milgram were headed for Jerusalem on Sunday. Their trip to Israel would have been the first time Milgram met Lashinsky's family, and according to the Israeli ambassador, Lashinsky had bought a ring and was planning to propose. The event they were attending at the museum was for young professionals from different embassies focused on bridge building in the Middle East, North Africa region. Event organizer Jojo Drake-Kaelin told Sky News the theme was turning pain into purpose.

Painfully, painfully ironic that at a time when we were speaking about bridge building that someone came in with such hate and destruction. We were wanting to counter the us versus them narrative and come together in humanity and shared humanity. Ayelet Rezin Betur, a friend of Milgram's, says she joined the embassy after Hamas' attack on Israel. Sarah told me that she joined. the embassy shortly after October

after she felt a high rise of anti-semitism around her, unlike anything she experienced before. But building bridges seems to be getting harder, not easier. A year and a half with tens of thousands of people efforts under stress. a horrific attack. At an overcoming differences From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly. This is Fresh Air contributor Anne-Marie Baldonado.

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The shooting of Sarah Milgram and Yaron Lashinsky comes amid a record number of anti-Semitic incidents in the United States. That's according to the Anti-Defamation League, and that is something I spoke about with Daniel Shapiro. He was U.S. ambassador to Israel during the Obama administration. He now serves as a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council.

Where were you when you heard this news last night? And may I ask what your first thought was? I was in a hotel room in Chicago and immediately started to hear from friends and family all over the United States in Israel. Of course, I completely condemn the murders of these two innocent people and extend sympathy to their families. But what hit me, I think, was the tragedy and outrage that we are living in an era

of an explosion of anti-Semitism, the statistics you just cited, and anti-Semitic violence. And the thing I never thought I would say was not my experience growing up in the United States. I associated that more with what Jewish communities in Europe lived with. But now Jews in the United States do have to fear for their physical safety. Certainly if they appear Jewish or they're taking part in Jewish communal activities, We go through magnetometers in our synagogues.

Our Jewish students are harassed on college campuses. And then yesterday, these two innocent young people were gunned down at a gathering at the Capitol Jewish Museum. Does it feel fundamentally different? to you, the safety, the security of Jews here in the U.S. and worldwide, does it feel fundamentally different since the start of the war? Certainly that has, that period of time, we've seen a more intensification of those kinds of events.

But, you know, let's call it what it is. It's hatred. It's anti-Semitism. This was an anti-Semitic hate crime for sure. But it was also an act of terrorism. Terrorism is the use of violence to advance a political agenda.

And we now see people expressing themselves not just with outrageous chants, chants that call for violence and terror against anyone who's Jewish or Israeli, things like globalize the Intifada, or blaming Jews generally, or maybe they say Zionists, but that's most Jews for policies related to Israel. or calling for Israel's destruction, saying from the river to the sea, this has become much more...

common and unfortunately too often associated with violence as well. I will inject that the FBI says they are investigating this shooting as an act of targeted violence. There are still, of course, many questions about it. how this all came to be and what charges may be filed. I will also note This couple, they were leaving an event organized by the Young Professional Group of the American Jewish Committee, which is a pro-Israel advocacy group that confronts anti-Semitism.

Dan Shapiro, how should we think about confronting anti-Semitism in a moment? Right. The American Jewish Committee does a lot of advocacy on behalf of the Jewish community, but on behalf of interfaith cooperation, that was one of the themes of last night. event as well Look, we need, first of all, the community itself will need to harden security of our institutions, and law enforcement will need to be more attentive, and we'll need funding for those security requirements.

But we really need moral clarity and strong political and communal leadership from within and without the Jewish community that completely rejects anti-Semitism and political violence of any kind. We need education to our young people of the history and the insidiousness of this persistent hatred which just has no place in our society.

And of course, the Jewish community, we need to be strong and resilient and proud. And we need to double down on our commitments and our involvement in Jewish communal life and strengthen our ties to allies of all faiths. I strongly believe that the vast majority of Americans reject, utterly reject this hateful violence.

but we're now all called upon to express that and then, of course, to defeat it. And we are now seeing this uptick that I mentioned in anti-Semitic incidents here in the U.S. Last year, A majority of those incidents were related to Israel or Zionism for the first time since the ADL has started tracking this kind of thing. Understanding, obviously, an event like last night is categorically horrific.

How do you think about the act of protest against the state of Israel or its political leaders, the sort of protest that is part of a healthy democracy while rejecting anti-Semitism? If someone wants to peacefully protest Israeli policy or U.S. policy toward the Middle East, obviously that's permissible and acceptable. I personally strongly disagree with many policies of the current Israeli government. So do many Israelis, by the way.

And I, of course, support finding a path for Palestinians to achieve a state of their own. But far too often, Jews are being harassed and intimidated, now even attacked. in the name of some cause related to the Palestinians. And nothing does more to undermine and really delegitimize that cause than to tie it to anti-Semitism and violence. Nothing does more to delegitimize that cause than to...

express sympathy for the murderous terrorist organization Hamas that started this war or its goals of destroying Israel. So peaceful protest, expressing oneself about policy views. always allowed. Tying it to these ancient and persistent hatreds and obviously any expression of it through violence, completely unacceptable. I do want to draw on your experience as a veteran of diplomacy in the Middle East.

Speak to the impact, the potential impact of this on hearts and minds in Israel. I guess I'm thinking of efforts to try to get back to a ceasefire in Gaza and the extent to which this may harden positions. Israelis have been dealing with this war since October 7th. That's when Hamas launched this brutal attack, killed 1,200 innocent people, kidnapped 250 hostages.

And the war has been going on too long. Of course, we all want to see it end. I think most Israelis want to see it end. They obviously want their hostages released. We know Palestinians have suffered, many civilians have suffered as well, and they need the war to end.

But you know when the ideology that spawned the war, the ideology that led Hamas to carry out the murderous attack in the first place, is replicated around the world against Jewish targets, against Israeli targets, against Israeli diplomats. Obviously, it raises the concern that this is going to be a long-running theme of Israeli life and of Jewish life. We certainly need our non-Jewish friends and allies in the Arab world, in Europe, in the United States.

to speak clearly that whatever your views about policy questions, this can't be the way. And if we have that, then we have a better path toward our way out of this. Ambassador, we'll leave it there. Daniel Shapiro, thank you. Thank you. He was U.S. Ambassador to Israel under President Obama. This episode... by Megan Lim. Jaron Wadanan and Courtney Dorning. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Mary Louise Kelly. Keeping up with the news can feel 24-hour

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