Police said a suspect was in custody after the shooting near the Capital Jewish Museum
A suspect is in custody after shooting dead two Israeli embassy staff outside a Jewish museum in Washington on Wednesday night.
The gunman, named by police as Elias Rodriguez, 30, of Chicago, approached a group of four people leaving an event at the Capital Jewish Museum and opened fire, killing Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim.
Metropolitan police chief Pamela Smith said the shooter had been pacing outside the museum, which is steps away from the FBI’s field office, before the shooting.
After killing the pair, who officials said were a couple, he walked inside, where event security detained him. The suspect yelled: “Free, free Palestine,” after he was arrested, police said.
Yeah.
Stop. It’s awful. Period!
Israel is doing worse by a long shot.
A) One lone gunman goes off the rails and murders two people because they’re Jewish/affiliated with the state. That’s tragic and wrong, and I haven’t yet seen anyone claim that his actions were good and right.
B) An entire government and military decides that their course of action shall be wanton bombing with callous disregard for innocent civilian bystanders, whilst deliberately restricting food, fuel, and medical care to a blockaded nation. That’s willful evil, that is being either openly or implicitly supported by an overwhelming majority of Israelis.
The two scenarios are not the same, but they both are tragic.
But if two people are killed, you don’t have to say: “Well, but what about…”
Yes, you’re right, the two events are entirely unrelated. Clearly just another case of anti-semitism out of nowhere. No possible other reason or context exists as to why the gunman was shouting “Free Palestine” as he was arrested after committing double murder.
Whatabboutism is when you deflect from one action perpetrated by your group, towards another action perpetrated by an out-group. Me expressing remorse for their deaths alongside the people their government murdered is not “Well what about…”
I never said that and you don’t have to put words in my mouth. Rest here, that’s all I wanted to say.
E: Putting words im mouths by the way doesn’t really help people to change their mind or discuss constructively, what I tried to do.
You’re not going to change your mind.
They might still move even further to the right.
I mean context is always important. Pretty sure any murder investigation goes into the motivation of the person who killed the victims.
I think it’s important to dispel the notion that the occupation of a neighboring country is somehow an act of protection, when it’s pretty obvious that it’s sparked a lot of provocation.
But they didn’t just pointed out the context. They said: “Genuinely awful for these two and their families, but the same can be said for ~53,000 dead Palestinians […]”. That wording tends to whataboutism which is something I just want to point out. I may be overreacting but this sentence just sounds very adverse.
I mean, I don’t think you get to decide what the scope of the context is.
For this not to be contextual you would have to claim that the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians had nothing to do with the gunman’s motive. I think that would be hard to claim considering that the murders were politically motivated, considering that the two victims were diplomats.
I think people have gotten a little too comfortable with claiming anything that shares a sentence structure with a logical fallacy to be a logical fallacy. You have to remember that logical fallacies have to be illogical in the first place. It’s not illogical to assume these two claims are associated.
Whataboutism have to equivocate two different scenarios that aren’t logically associated with the events in the originating claim.
It’s illogical to compare them from a moral perspective. You don’t get to just shoot people because they have a different perspective than you, because they were raised differently or get their news from different places than you do. It’s not exactly whataboutism though, it’s more of a false equivalence. Whatever the case, the gunman is not morally justified in murdering these two people. If you think he is, then you are blinded by ideology and shouldn’t be allowed to participate in democratic society.
The only person doing that is you… Everyone else is trying to point out that the two events are logically connected.
Lol, I don’t think his motivations were centered around where people get their news. There is a genocide happening in Palestine, it’s not really a matter of perspective or debate. Violence begets violence, no one is claiming that’s a good thing, it’s just inescapable blowback.
No one is equivocating the two. People are just acknowledging that political violence against those who represent a state is to be expected when a state conducts a genocide.
Lol, I’ve started my statement claiming I didn’t think people deserved to be murdered. You keep trying to connect my statements to moral grandstanding because you don’t have any other kind of rebuttal.
Why are we like this online? Why does the inbox regularly receive with “well ahktually” replies compared to real discussion or comments?
Please don’t twist what I said to build a narrative where I’m some crypto-bigot trying to plant hatred. I wish the Israel apologists applied anywhere near that same level of effort towards the people who actually spew antisemitism…
This exact sentiment is why people don’t talk about Israel, but their reputation globally is in the gutter. Or how actual neo-nazis can pass fake Voltaire quotes that ‘Jews control the global media’ because criticism of Israel is verboten:
You aren’t over reacting. It’s a massive false equivalence comparing what Israel has done against the murder of two individuals. The guy that got murdered isn’t Israel. He’s a person with opinions, right or wrong. He got murdered for a few tweets and an affiliation with Israel. He’s not a combatant, but a civilian. Same for his wife. People justifying these murders are flat out wrong, and there’s no place in America for ideological murders. In order to have a system where free speech is protected, you can’t allow people to be murdered for their views. There is no defending these murders or trying to justify them.
People aren’t trying to equivocate the two, that would be insulting, not only to the people who were murdered, but to the tens of thousands of people being killed in Palestine.
I mean he’s a representative of the state, which is why this is a politically motivated murder.
Explanations aren’t justifications, just because people understand and even agree with the motivations of the killer doesn’t mean the agree with how he acted upon them.
I find the cries for the sanctity of protecting civilians to be pretty meek considering the state these civilians represent have overwhelmingly killed more civilians than armed combatants.
This is the inherent problem with a state targeting civilian populations, it provokes violence upon your own civilians.
Another person misunderstanding the Constitution…Free speech doesn’t protect you from the public’s reaction to your speech, it guarantees protection from the government targeting you for your speech.
This isn’t an example of someone’s free speech being violated. An actual example would be students being arrested for their protest about Israels actions in Gaza.
Again, understanding a motive isn’t justifying. No one said they agreed that those people deserved to be murdered , you’re just moralizing.
Seems like a lot of victim blaming in here. It can be very simple. Don’t murder people you disagree with. Also, free speech needs to be protected culturally as well, and not just through the government. But the government must also protect free speech, and that includes protecting people from others. There doesn’t need to be a discussion about understanding motives at all. It’s wrong and needs to be condemned, full stop. Otherwise you don’t have a free country. You can’t hand wave it away or shrug just because you understand their motive.
Thanks.
In a vacuum that makes sense, but this is going to be used to rationalize/justify some nasty shit. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to brace for that.