The bullet was not just aimed at two diplomats. It was aimed at the naive, persistent hope that peace was still possible.
That idea is now under siege, most recently on 21 May, when two Israeli embassy staffers were gunned down in Washington, the latest in a string of deadly antisemitic attacks.
Sarah Milgrim (26) and Yaron Lischinsky (30) had just left a cultural event at the Capital Jewish Museum when their killer, Elias Rodriguez (31), opened fire.
Twenty-one bullets. Point blank. Execution style. A ritual execution posing as protest.
When Rodriguez was taken into custody, he shouted, “I did it for Gaza.”
Milgrim documented stories of women raped by Hamas. Lischinsky, a German-born Christian who became Israeli, planned to propose to her that week.
“They were going to travel to Israel together,” said Ilan Fluss, Israel's top envoy in the Philippines. “He bought the ring.”
Instead, she left in a body bag. And he never got the chance to ask.
They shot the bridge-builders first. And the world is asking why the bridges are burning.
CONDOLENCES WITHOUT CONVICTION
Washington called it what it was. President Trump condemned the killings as antisemitic. The Justice Department labeled it terrorism. The FBI launched a hate-crime probe. Security around Jewish sites was tightened.
But the message had already landed: They were peacekeepers. What they believed in got them killed. The world must now decide how to answer it.
This wasn’t a battlefield. It was murder on a sidewalk in D.C. Israel is asserting what any nation must: The right to respond. With precision. Without apology. You can’t mourn the dead and deny defense.
The killings come amid a disturbing pattern. Since Hamas attacked in October 2023, there have been a spate of attacks and attempted attacks on Israeli embassies and diplomatic personnel around the world.
“These were not just attempts that were prevented,” said Fluss. “These were actual attacks.”
The silence from many international leaders has been louder than any condemnation. The hand-wringing. The carefully hedged statements. The subtle implication that Israel, somehow, invited this.
When the world shrugs at slain diplomats, Israel has no one left to negotiate with.
The argument: It was a bullet aimed at diplomacy itself. And when the hands that reach for peace are shot down, retaliation is not provocation. It's inevitability.
OLD HATE'S NEW PLATFORM
Fluss announced the news during Israel’s Independence Day celebration in Manila. He had to open the event with condolences.
Still, the celebration went on because diplomacy demands it. Grief and mourning buttoned under protocol.
Fluss has served in the Philippines since 2021, and has spent decades building partnerships in Southeast Asia.
He speaks often about peace, agricultural innovation, digital diplomacy. These days, even optimism has a price.
“In the last year and a half, we’ve seen a dramatic rise in global anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiment,” he said. “And this sentiment leads to terrorism...leads people to take the law into their own hands and do terrible acts.”
Even the Philippines, long considered a friend to Israel, has seen a rise.
Fluss claimed a surge in the number of Filipinos who now express anti-Semitic views, up from single digits a decade ago.
“It’s serious,” Fluss said. “We haven’t seen violence here, and I hope we never do.”
Much of the hatred is borne online. Much of it is disguised as solidarity.
Rodriguez’s posts backed anti-Israel protests. His slogans were familiar. His hate practiced. Violence now speaks where moral clarity once did.
“There’s a difference between criticism and denying Israel’s right to exist,” said Fluss.
“‘Free Palestine’ and ‘From the river to the sea’ aren’t pleas for peace,” Fluss argues. “They’re maps with Israel erased.” The phrase spans the Jordan River to the Mediterranean. Erasing coexistence. Offering ultimatum.
Fluss urged the world to learn its history. Israel accepted the 1947 UN partition. Arab states chose war. Today, peace is undone. Shouted out of context. Stripped from classrooms. Buried under slogans that sound humane but call for annihilation.
Resistance misread is rejection. Slogans, weaponized, become blueprints for blood.
For too long, Israel was told to negotiate with those who teach children to chant for its death. Now it answers in a language terrorists understand.
It is not “escalation” to respond to terrorism with force. It is the minimum moral requirement of any state that claims the right to exist.
To say Israel's response is disproportionate is to pretend that the provocation was anything less than genocidal. The war didn’t start with rockets. It started with silence. With every excuse made for those who hate Jews more than they love their own future.
You don’t kill the voice of diplomacy and expect the response to be polite. At a certain point, grief hardens into clarity. Israel has reached that point.
You bury Sarah. You bury Yaron. You bury the threat before it buries one more.