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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.