(Headline USA) Independent reporter Ken Klippenstein said in the early hours of Thursday that he’s obtained the manifesto of Elias Rodriguez, who allegedly shot and killed two staff members of the Israeli Embassy in Washington on Wednesday evening.
The purported manifesto appears to confirm the initial reports about Rodriguez—that he killed Yaron Lischinsky, an Israeli citizen, and Sarah Milgrim, an American, as an act of terrorism to draw attention to Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
“An armed action is not necessarily a military action. It usually is not. Usually it is theater and spectacle, a quality it shares with many unarmed actions,” Rodriguez’s manifesto states at one point.
I've obtained the Israeli Embassy shooter manifesto https://t.co/4udZljFf81
— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) May 22, 2025
“Aaron Bushnell and others sacrificed themselves in the hopes of stopping the massacre and the state works to make us feel their sacrifice was made in vain, that there is no hope in escalating for Gaza and no point in bringing the war home. We can’t let them succeed. Their sacrifices were not made in vain,” the manifesto states.
“The impunity that representatives of our government feel at abetting this slaughter should be revealed as an illusion, then.”
‘In cold blood’
The shooting followed the American Jewish Committee’s annual Young Diplomats reception at the Capital Jewish Museum.
Lischinsky and Milgrim, who were reportedly about to be engaged, were leaving an event at the Capital Jewish Museum when the suspect, who had been seen pacing outside the museum, approached a group of four people and opened fire, Metropolitan Police Chief Pamela Smith said at a news conference.
Rodriguez, 31, of Chicago, then walked into the museum, was detained by event security and began chanting, “Free, free Palestine,” Smith said.
Last week, the Capital Jewish Museum was one of the local nonprofits in Washington awarded funding from a $500,000 grant program to increase its security. The museum’s leaders were concerned because it is a Jewish organization and due to its new LGBTQ exhibit, according to NBC4 Washington.
Israel’s devastating campaign in Gaza has killed more than 53,000 people, mostly women and children, according to local health authorities. The fighting has displaced 90% of the territory’s roughly 2 million population, sparked a hunger crisis and obliterated vast swaths of Gaza’s urban landscape.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
