Rampant antisemitism and anti-Israel activism on university campuses helped lay the groundwork for Wednesday night’s fatal shooting of two Israeli embassy staffers leaving a Jewish event in Washington, DC, according to experts who spoke with The Algemeiner.

Yaron Lischinsky, 30, and Sarah Lynn Milgrim, 26, a couple about to become engaged, were murdered as they left an event at the Capital Jewish Museum for young professionals and diplomatic staff hosted by the American Jewish Committee (AJC).

Elias Rodriguez, a 30-year-old left-wing and anti-Israel activist from Chicago, was charged on Thursday in US federal court with murdering the Israeli embassy aides. According to witnesses and federal agents, he chanted, “Free, Free Palestine” — a war cry that has been a staple of the pro-Hamas movement on campuses across the US. An affidavit filed by federal authorities in support of the criminal complaint charging Rodriguez revealed that he also said at the scene of the shooting, “I did it for Palestine; I did it for Gaza.”

On Thursday, a Middle East scholar and the executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, Asaf Romirowsky, who is Jewish, told The Algemeiner that Rodriguez’s alleged crimes can be linked to higher education’s normalizing of antisemitism.

“Last night’s heinous acts by Elias Rodriguez once again show how normalized antisemitism has become, being tolerated and institutionalized in our universities and media for decades,” Romirowsky explained. “Words have meaning and consequences and there is a reason why slogans used on campus calling for ‘resistance,’ ‘globalize the intifada,’ and ‘Free Palestine,’ are actionable Islamist terroristic commands synonymous to how the perpetrators of 10/7 [Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel] acted.”

He added, “There is no surprise that within hours after the murders he received praise from Moustafa Bayram, a member of Hezbollah.”

Esteemed Jewish scholar Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, founder and executive director of antisemitism watchdog AMCHA Initiative, noted that in the days leading up to the shooting, pro-Hamas campus groups called on their supporters to “escalate” their conduct.

“They give us no choice,” a campus group which calls itself Columbia University Apartheid Divesthttps://www.algemeiner.com/2025/04/01/meta-boots-anti-zionist-columbia-university-group-instagram/ wrote in a Substack email blast shared on Wednesday morning, some 12 hours before the murders. “We will continue to disrupt the imperialist system that thrives on bloodshed and exploitation … We can disrupt and bring these rotten institutions to their graves.”

CUAD was preceded by other activists whose rhetoric portrayed Israel and the Jews who live there as evil.

On Saturday, a graduating George Washington University senior, Cecilia Culver, accused Israel of targeting Palestinians “simply for [their] remaining in the country of their ancestors” and said that GW students are passive contributors to the “imperialist system.” An economics and statistics major, Culver went on to charge that the university has “blood on its hands.”

Similar remarks were uttered during New York University’s commencement ceremony for the Gallatin School of Individualized Study.

“I want to say that the genocide currently occurring is supported politically and militarily by the United States, is paid for by our tax dollars, and has been live streamed to our phones for the past 18 months,” said Logan Rozos, who presented administrators with a false draft of his speech, leaving them unaware of his intention to promote notions frequently trafficked by neo-Nazis and jihadist terror groups. “I want to say that I condemn this genocide and complicity in this genocide.”

The connection between the incidents is undeniable, Rossman-Benjamin told The Algemeiner.

“The missing link between the commencement speeches and the shooter’s action is the CUAD bulletin, and its call to ‘escalate,’ which the commencement speakers and shooter each did in their own way,” she said. “What we also understand is that the shooter apparently claimed, ‘The action [killing] would have been morally justified taken 11 years ago.’” Around 11 years ago is when he would be 19 years old, around the time he was at UIC [the University of Illinois Chicago]. It could be where he became radicalized.”

Domestic terrorism may be the end game for the over 150 pro-Hamas groups operating on colleges campuses and elsewhere across the US to foster anti-Israel demonstrations, according to a September 2024 report published by the Capital Research Center (CRC) think tank.

“The movement contains militant elements pushing it toward a wider, more severe campaign focused on property destruction and violence properly described as domestic terrorism,” researcher Ryan Mauro wrote in the report, titled “Marching Toward Violence: The Domestic Anti-Israeli Protest Movement.” “It demands the ‘dismantlement’ of America’s ‘colonialist,’ ‘imperialist,’ or ‘capitalist,’ system, often calling for the US to be abolished as a country.”

He continued, “These revolutionary goals are held by the two different factions of the anti-Israel extremist groups. The first faction combines Islamists, communists/Marxists, and anarchists. The second faction consists of groups with white supremacist/nationalist ideologies. They share Jew-hatred, anti-Americanism, and the goal of sparking a revolutionary uprising.”

The group most responsible for the anti-Israel protest movement is Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), according to the report.

Drawing on statements issued and actions taken by SJP and their collaborators, Mauro made the case that toolkits published by SJP herald Hamas for perpetrating mass casualties of civilians; SJP has endorsed Iran’s attacks on Israel as well as its stated intention to overturn the US-led world order; and other groups under its umbrella have called on followers to “Bring the Intifada Home.” Such activities, the report explained, accelerated after Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, which pro-Hamas groups perceived as an inflection point in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and an opportunity. By flooding the internet and college campuses with agitprop and staging activities — protests or vandalisms — they hoped to manufacture a critical mass of youth support for their ideas, thus creating an army of revolutionaries willing to adopt Hamas’s aims as their own.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post ‘Globalize the Intifada’: Scholars Link DC Murder of Israeli Embassy Aides to Campus Antisemitism, Incitement first appeared on Algemeiner.com.