Israeli couple killed near Jewish Museum in Washington, DC

Two young adults were killed outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC, on Wednesday night. I had planned to make this tragedy the introduction to a very different Daily Article than the one I am now writing this morning. However, today’s news gives us new information about the victims that has changed my direction and focus.

Yaron Lischinsky was born in Germany and moved to Israel, where he served in the Israeli military, before relocating to Washington. He worked at the Israeli embassy as a research assistant. According to a friend, he was a “devout Christian.”

Sarah Lynn Milgrim was an American from Kansas who worked in the Israeli embassy’s public diplomacy department. Her father said she “loved everybody that lived in the Middle East” and “had a lot of close Palestinian friends, as well as many Israeli friends.”

According to Israel’s ambassador to the US, Mr. Lichinsky planned to propose to her in Jerusalem next week.

The suspect who shot and murdered them later told police, “I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza.”

Terrorist kills woman about to deliver her baby

Two days after this shocking tragedy, my anger over it has only grown. What could the suspect possibly believe he changed in Gaza with his crime? Does he think Israel will change its stance on Hamas? The fact that he shot an American with many Palestinian friends and a German-born Christian shows that he had no idea who he was murdering.

This is the way antisemitism works, however. Hate crimes against Jews have risen in the US by 344 percent in the past five years and by 893 percent over the last ten years. But they have been part of the Jewish story from the time of their slavery in Egypt to today.

Earlier this month, a woman named Tzeela Gez was driving with her husband to the hospital in Samaria to deliver her baby when they were attacked by a terrorist. Her husband was injured; she was killed. Her baby was later delivered in the hospital.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “This vile act precisely reflects the difference between us—those who cherish and bring life—and the despicable terrorists whose very purpose is to kill us and cut lives short.”

By contrast, according to an English translation of an Arabic post, Hamas lauded the shooting, which it called “heroic.”

Prejudice by definition

I have explained previously why so many people hate the Jews:

• Critical theory taught on many university campuses brands Israel as a colonial oppressor of the Palestinian people.
• According to historian Götz Aly and scholar Thomas Sowell, antisemitism is deeply rooted in destructive envy of Jewish culture and success.
• Racial prejudice has plagued them throughout their history. The Qur’an calls them “apes” and “swine” (cf. 5:60; 7:166). Hamas blames them for the French Revolution, the Communist Revolution, World Wars I and II, and wars around the world today. Adolf Hitler convinced millions of Germans that they were the source of all the problems confronting their nation.

But intellectual explanations are not sufficient today.

The fact that a man claiming to support Gaza can murder a German-born Christian and an American with many Palestinian friends shows how nonsensical antisemitic hatred truly is. The same is true of the racism experienced by generations of African Americans and other minorities in the US. Misogyny and chauvinism endure in our supposedly advanced society. Hate crimes against Christians and churches continue to escalate.

Prejudice is, by definition, an “irrational” attitude of hostility. It is rooted in the prideful belief that I am superior to you by virtue of your race, skin color, religion, gender, or another trait. The gunman in Washington somehow believed that he had the right to take the lives of two innocent people, that they deserved to die, that he was defending a cause that had nothing to do with them personally.

Nothing will change in the Middle East, but their families will grieve their deaths for the rest of their lives.

“Eternity is but a breath away”

Prejudice and antisemitism are vile expressions of the “will to power,” the sinful desire to be our own God (Genesis 3:5), to reject the sacredness of human life (Genesis 1:27) out of pride and hatred. There is no true remedy for them except the gospel of Jesus.

No human programs can change the human heart. We should do all we can to mitigate the tragic effects of sin, but we cannot solve it. I cannot make myself love you any more than you can make yourself love me. And I cannot kill the “sin that dwells within me” any more than Paul could (Romans 7:20).

This is why you and I need so desperately to submit our lives every day to God’s Holy Spirit (Ephesians 5:18), asking him to cleanse us, empower us, and manifest his character in our lives (Galatians 5:22–23). It’s why we need to share the gospel with everyone we can in every way we can, knowing that it is the only antidote to the destructiveness of sin in our lives and culture.

And it’s why we need to live every day ready for eternity. What happened in Washington could happen to anyone, anywhere. Sixty-eight people are murdered every day in the US. We only have today to be right with God and to use our influence to help those we know do the same.

Billy Graham was right:

“Heaven is real and hell is real, and eternity is but a breath away.”

Are you ready?

Quote for the day:

“It is the duty of every Christian to be Christ to his neighbor.” —Martin Luther

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