The Washington museum murders were pure antisemitism
Misreporting of 'diplomats' being targeted was both irrelevant and inaccurate
You would have to have a heart of stone not to be touched by the tragic murders of two young people leaving an event at the Jewish museum in Washington DC. The beautiful couple, smiling in pictures, their lives about to be transformed by engagement and (you hope) a long and happy marriage, cut short. By an idiotic murderer whose actions, including shouting “free Palestine” as he was arrested, will have precisely the reverse impact to that he wished for. Just as world opinion was (rightly and far too slowly) coming alive to the realities of genocidal policies being followed by Netanyahu’s government, a callous moron took an action that destroyed more lives and diverted attention from this urgent issue
I was contacted yesterday by some journalists wanting to talk about the threat to “diplomats” that this seemed to demonstrate. Both of the victims, Sarah Lynn Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky worked at the Israeli Embassy in Washington DC. Diplomats are often targeted as emanations of the state they serve and, by extension, the policies that state follows. In superficially similar circumstances, Russia’s ambassador to Turkey, Andrei Karlov, was shot dead by an off-duty Turkish policeman in 2016 as he attended an art exhibition in Ankara. The killer, Mevlüt Mert Altıntaş, shouted, “Do not forget Aleppo, do not forget Syria”. In the early days of the Syrian civil war protesters against the Assad regime targeted Syria’s embassies abroad. Both the embassies in Cairo and Canberra were ransacked by anti-Assad protesters in February 2012.
In Istanbul earlier this week I had cause to pass by the grand building of the British consulate general. I will never forget the day in November 2003 when that building was targeted by a suicide truck bomb, killing consul-general Roger Short and several others. The attack had occurred on the same day as another bombing hit a British bank in the city and was widely seen as a response to Britain’s involvement in the invasion and occupation of Iraq earlier in the year. At the time I was working in the British Embassy in Yemen and the sense of insecurity all over British missions in the Middle East was palpable. In both attacks, most of the dead were Turkish citizens, whose country had declined to participate in the war, to the dismay of the United States and United Kingdom.
In the logic of terrorism and political violence, a diplomat is a legitimate target: they are a direct and physical emanation of the state they represent, they enjoy a special status and immunities because of the work they do and (to some extent) they accept that risk as part of their job.
But Milgrim and Lischinsky were not diplomats. Yes, they both worked at the embassy in Washington DC, but they were local hires. This might seem like a nicety, but it is an important distinction. Almost without exception, all over the world embassies from almost every country have regular employees, known as locally-engaged staff, to carry out functions that don’t need expensive diplomats with their expat packages and special immunities. These local staff won’t need to be accredited with the foreign ministry and are often tasked with administration or research duties.
In many British embassies in smaller countries, the number of actual diplomats, accredited with the foreign ministry, might be just one or two, with the embassy mostly running on local staff. And in large international cities such as Washington DC, it will not be unusual for youngsters with an ambition to become diplomats in the future to work in an embassy to build their careers. According to reporting in the New York Times, this was the case with Lischinsky: “Hanan Lischinsky said his brother had been considering applying to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ cadet course to train to be a diplomat.” An ambition that will never be realised.
Undoubtedly, Israel’s diplomats are at particular risk, but there is no evidence that the killer of Milgrim and Lischinsky had any idea that they worked at the embassy. They were shot from behind in a larger group as they left an event at the museum. It is almost certain they were not targeted because of their jobs and the killer probably had no idea who they were at all. They were just terribly unlucky. The point about their killing was that it was an unbridled act of hate. The only targeting was that they were likely to be jewish and, in the conspiratorial mindset of antisemitism, part of a global conspiracy that is working in support of the actions of the Israeli government.
By referring to the tragic couple as “diplomats” the crude antisemitism of the attack was blunted. Their work had no relation to their deaths. The threat is not to diplomats, but to Jews everywhere. And in a country where access to firearms has been made as easy as possible as a matter of government policy, this risk is all the more acute.