Phelim McAleer: For Jews in America now, their allies have turned into their executioners

Pictures, flowers and candles mark the spot where, just 10 days ago, Israeli embassy staffers Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim were shot dead leaving the museum.

The pictures in the memorial show a couple, very young and very much in love, living a blessed life of high profile conferences and fun Instagrammable brunches.

Yaron had bought a ring and was going to propose to Sarah during a trip the following week. Instead, their lives were ended when a leftist activist waited outside an event at the museum. He didn't know Yaron and Sarah worked for the Israeli embassy but he was sure they were Jewish*. That was enough.

He walked up, shouted "Free Palestine", and shot both of them several times. Yaron died instantly. Sarah was wounded and was able to crawl away. The killer followed, stood over her and put several more bullets into her as she lay on the ground. Then he reloaded the gun and fired again.

Jew Hunting - thought to be something found only in the past in the old countries of Europe had come to modern day America.

It has not arrived out of nowhere. After the October 7 killings in Israel the victims were not yet buried when American leftists were announcing gleeful support for the biggest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

There then followed months of protests on college campuses across the US.

Progressives who had previously campaigned for safe spaces from offending words and ideas were happy to verbally and physically attack Jewish students. Professors openly supported Hamas and their actions on October 7 and called Israel a genocidal state.

There were literally thousands of anti-semitic incidents in colleges across the US. Then, the presidents of three leading American universities, including Harvard, told a Congressional hearing that calling for the genocide of Jews "didn’t necessarily violate their institution’s rules on bullying and harassment".

And of course what happens on campus never stays on campus and so we had the shooting of Yaron and Sarah at the DC museum.

Outside in America, US Jews may be living in a post-October 7 world but inside the Capital Jewish Museum it was still very much October 6.

Pre-October 7, American Jews were "allies” in almost every progressive cause. They marched to proclaim that Black Lives Mattered, they took a knee to Saint George Floyd and their top lawyers fought for "abortion and transgender rights”. And they overwhelmingly voted for Democrats.

Jewish intellectuals and activists were also at the forefront of the civil rights movement. Two of the three young people murdered in the infamous Mississippi Burning incident were Jewish.

This is reflected inside the Capital Jewish Museum where there are massive exhibits that show how restrictions on "abortion and transgender rights" are a danger to the Jewish way of life. We learn about climate change.

There is no mention of the October 7 massacres in the museum but there is an exhibit about the January 6 riot by Trump supporters at the Capitol Building.

We are also told that anti-semitism is linked to white supremacy and racism. That kind of cliched lazy thinking may have worked pre-October 7 but the leftist who shot Yaron and Sarah was committed to fighting for all these progressive causes.

He abhorred white supremacy and racism but like most progressives he saw Jewish people as equivalent to the white supremacists, not the victims. The killer, and most of his political comrades, believed shooting the young couple outside the museum put him on the right side of history.

Leaving the museum I passed through the gift shop. I didn’t see any copies of The Diary of Anne Frank for sale but front and centre was a delightful picture book featuring "Queer Icons and Their Cats." Priorities!

The next day a group of elderly Jewish people in Boulder Colorado were set on fire by another anti-semite shouting "Free Palestine”. Eight had to be hospitalised.

Post-war America was a golden age for Jews - a place where for the first time in their history they were able to live in a country without fear of persecution or pogrom.

But as the flowers for Sarah and Yaron wilt outside the museum, America’s promise to its Jewish citizens also fades. Jewish people now face a chilling truth: their allies have become their executioners.

*Ironically, Yaron Lischinsky was a Christian who happened to love Israel.

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Phelim McAleer is a Co Tyrone-born journalist/producer working in Los Angeles. You can find him on the social media platform X: @PhelimMcAleer