(Tel Aviv, Israel) — Wake up, America. “Free Palestine,” “Resistance By Any Means Necessary,” and “Globalize The Intifada” are calls to murder Jews. Do you get it now?
Elias Rodriguez didn’t just shoot Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim; he executed this soon-to-be-engaged Jewish couple in cold blood. She desperately tried to crawl away as he reloaded and shot her dead. He then strolled into the Capitol Jewish Museum like it was nothing.
How did the mind of Elias Rodriguez, an American-born university-educated student, become so poisoned?
From 2016 to 2018, Rodriguez attended the University of Illinois, Chicago, a hotbed of anti-Israel hatred. Last June, UIC allowed its students to erect a pro-Hamas camp on campus, blaming Israel for the war ignited after the October 7 Hamas massacre.
Jonathan Epstein, an eyewitness at the Jewish Museum last Wednesday, chillingly described looking directly into Rodriguez’s eyes.
“We were in a secure room when he initially walked in,” Epstein recounted. “I just saw him screaming and then being handcuffed. But what I saw in his eyes… I went to Columbia for grad school, and I saw the same thing in his eyes as I saw in the eyes of all the protesters at Columbia.”
Rodriguez is responsible for his own actions. He chose to pull the trigger. No one forced him to kill. It is, however, startling to hear CNN anchor Sara Sidner defend those organizing and participating in the violent demonstrations.
“They did not create this horrific shooting,” Sidner insisted. “They did not, you know, sort of—they didn’t shoot.”
“They gave permission, and they have called for this,” Epstein responded. “They have called for ‘Intifada revolution,’ which is the same thing [Rodriguez] yelled [the night of the shooting].”
UIC appears to be where Rodriguez learned to view the world through the lens of “oppressor versus oppressed.” At UIC, Rodriguez joined two of the most extreme anti-American organizations in the country, the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) and the ANSWER Coalition.
PSL is a communist organization dedicated to ending capitalism and the violent overthrow of the American government. The group also supports dictatorships like those in Cuba and North Korea. The day after the October 7 massacre, PSL founder Eugene Puryear organized a rally in Times Square where he mocked the Nova Festival victims and bragged about the slaughter of Israeli “hipsters.”
During a rally on October 8, 2023, in Times Square, demonstrators could be heard chanting: “Who is the terrorist? The United States of America! We feel the Palestinian blood, and we stand in solidarity with Palestine!”
Puryear stated, “We want to win. We have to be organized. But we can’t just be organized in an amorphous sense; we have to organize in a very specific way. History teaches us this: we have to organize a Communist Party.”
The ANSWER Coalition is a PSL front group that organizes massive anti-American, anti-Israel demonstrations. Rodriguez participated in these protests. In 2023 and 2024, he worked for History Makers, a Chicago-based organization that weaponizes racial grievance under the guise of preserving African American history. History Makers glorifies Louis Farrakhan, who refers to Jews as termites and bloodsuckers.
The X account, identified as belonging to Elias Rodriguez, is full of radical, violent, anti-Israel, and anti-Jewish posts—including open calls for violence. “Happy New Year, Death to Israel, Death to Amerikkka.”
On the day of the murders, a 900-word manifesto titled “Escalate For Gaza, Bring The War Home” appeared. The document described the shooting of the young Israeli diplomats as a “sane” and morally justified response to what he characterized as the “genocidal state of Israel.”
Scripture tells us in Luke 6:45, “A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.”
Rodriguez was full of hatred because, for years, that’s what he was consuming. He fed his mind and soul on anti-American, anti-Israel, and antisemitic content. We are what we eat—not just physically but spiritually and intellectually.
The same university thought that radicalized Rodriguez is spreading like a metastasizing cancer across America. Until we confront the institutions creating these monsters, there could be more Jews like Yaron and Sarah lying dead on American streets.
