Y Red, 26 May 2025

Two Israeli embassy staff members were shot and killed in front of the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington on Wednesday night. Elias Rodriguez, 30, is accused of opening fire on a group of people on Wednesday night as they left an event for young diplomats hosted by the American Jewish Committee, an advocacy group that supports Israel and fights antisemitism.

In addition to first-degree murder, Rodriguez was charged in a criminal complaint with murder of foreign officials, causing death with a firearm and discharging a firearm in a crime of violence.

Rodriguez was associated with two leading institutions of the revolutionary ecosystem, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and one of its front groups, the ANSWER Coalition, an acronym for Act Now to Stop War and End Racism.

He attended several marches coordinated by both groups in 2018, and was identified as a member of the PSL. Now that Rodriguez has been caught both groups are distancing themselves from him. Israel’s Foreign Ministry identified the two as Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim.

The case brings to mind the killing of a German diplomat by Grynszpan which was retaliated by the Nazis in the Kristallnacht. We do not have any tears for the Zionist diplomats who represent the Zionist monster guilty of genocide. It is a lie that it is a case of antisemitism.

Trotsky wrote an article for Grynszpan where he wrote: "It is clear to anyone even slightly acquainted with political history that the policy of the fascist gangsters directly and sometimes deliberately provokes terrorist acts. What is most astonishing is that so far there has been only one Grynszpan. Undoubtedly the number of such acts will increase. We Marxists consider the tactic of individual terror to be inexpedient in the tasks of the liberating struggle of the proletariat as well as oppressed nationalities. A single isolated hero cannot replace the masses. But we understand only too clearly the inevitability of such convulsive acts of despair and vengeance. All our emotions, all our sympathies, are with the self-sacrificing avengers even though they have been unable to discover the correct road. To tear Grynszpan out of the hands of capitalist justice, which can chop off his head to further serve capitalist diplomacy, is the elementary, immediate task of the international working class!" [i]

Free Rodriguez!

Endnotes:

[i] Leon Trotsky For Grynszpan Against Fascist Pogrom Gangs and Stalinist Scoundrels (1939)