the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
May 26, 2025
On Wednesday, May 21, two young staffers of the Israeli embassy, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, were gunned down by an avowed supporter of Palestinian and Gazan human rights. It was a horrendous act of violence, of one person against two others, a young Israeli and an American who were not a part of the Israeli decision-making apparatus.
Elias Rodriguez, a 31-year-old Chicago resident, yelled “Free Palestine” shortly after he shot the two. He appeared deeply angry about the ongoing slaughter in Gaza carried out by the Israeli Defense Forces, orchestrated by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and supported by the United States. His stated purpose was to “bring the war home.”
His apparent anger is understandable in light of the continued Israeli slaughter of the Gazan Palestinian population, in the name of attacking Hamas, the terrorist organization that attacked Israeli people on October 7, 2023.
To say the least, the Israeli counterattack has been carried out against the entire Gazan population. Israel is clearly bent on destroying and displacing that entire population, associated with Hamas or not. Especially since the U.S. State, under Donald Trump, seems to support the idea of removing the entire Palestinian population and turning Gaza into a “Riviera of the Middle East.”
So of course people are outraged! It is an ongoing humanitarian catastrophe, carried out by Israel with the complete military and political support of the United States. Israel continues carrying out further bombings, recently killing, among others, nine of a Gazan doctor’s ten children over the weekend. Israel is threatening to starve to death tens of thousands of Gazans, including 14,000 infants, if they do not move away yet again.
But the action by Rodriguez could not possibly challenge Israeli nor U.S. state power, because these states are the representatives of an entire ruling class and an entire economic system that produces these injustices, these wars, this slaughter.
In fact, these shootings allowed the U.S. and Israeli officials, and all the major media, to completely flip the script, shifting blame away from the brutality of U.S. and Israeli state attacks against a helpless Palestinian population.
Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel, jumped on the new narrative, stating that the “Free Palestine” slogan is the latest version of “Heil Hitler”—equating the fight for one people’s freedom with the genocide of another!
The U.S. and its allies decided long ago that the formation of a Jewish homeland, built on the premise that any Jewish person could automatically be a citizen, could serve imperialism’s purposes relative to maintaining order in the Middle East. This homeland, built on occupied land, would need the protection of U.S. imperialism and its allies against all those made landless and homeless in the transaction. The Palestinian population in the West Bank, Gaza and all of Israel were offered up as the sacrificial lambs to that arrangement, as were the Israeli people.
No demonstration, no act of individual terror, can put an end to the war and destruction laid in place by imperialism. Only the collective action of the working class itself, organized and on its feet and ready for revolutionary action, has the power to challenge the decisions made at the level of the imperialist state.
Even now, as the leaders of Canada, the United Kingdom and the E.U. are taking their distance from the slaughter Netanyahu carries out, they still support Israel with over 150 million dollars worth of new arms shipments. As does the United States, continuing its arms shipments—arms that directly contribute to the slaughter of men, women, and children.
The working class of Palestine, and the working class of Israel, have the same interests as does the working class of the United States. And that interest is in the overthrow of capitalism and its wars here—and across the world.
Individual acts of violence do not advance us toward that goal. Only the organization of a party with that goal in mind can move us forward.