Two recent terrorist attacks—one in Washington, D.C., the other in Boulder, Colorado—have violently underlined what many have long feared: the Israeli–Palestinian conflict is no longer confined to the Middle East. It’s bleeding into the streets of Western cities, dragging ideological fury and sectarian hatred across oceans and onto American soil.

The first attack unfolded on 21 May 2025, just outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., where a gunman ambushed a young couple leaving a Jewish community event. The victims—Yaron Lischinsky, 30, and Sarah Milgrim, 26—were staffers at the Israeli Embassy. They had just walked out of an American Jewish Committee conference when the shooter struck, unloading 21 bullets into their backs before finishing them off at close range. The killer, Elias Rodriguez, 31, of Illinois, was arrested on the spot. He made no effort to flee. Instead, he tried to storm the museum itself and was stopped only by security. With eerie calm, he declared, “I did this for Gaza. Free Palestine.” As police dragged him away, he kept shouting: “Free, free Palestine!”

Less than two weeks later, on 1 June, during a public vigil for Israeli hostages kidnapped by Hamas on 7 October 2023, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, a 45-year-old Egyptian national, stormed a peaceful rally in the Pearl Street pedestrian mall armed with homemade firebombs. Without a word, he lit up a flamethrower and began launching fire into the crowd. The air filled with screams as firebombs tore through the vigil. Eight people were scorched, and one was left in a critical condition. Amid the chaos, witnesses heard Soliman yelling “Free Palestine!” as flames erupted and attendees fled for safety. The scene on Pearl Street quickly turned into one of smoke and stunned disbelief as bystanders and police tackled the attacker. “It is clear that this is a targeted act of violence,” said FBI Special Agent Mark Michalek, who announced that the Bureau was investigating the assault as an act of terrorism. Colorado’s Attorney General echoed the sentiment, confirming that it appeared to be a hate crime aimed at a Jewish gathering.

In both cases, the perpetrators explicitly tied their violence to Israel, and the war in Gaza, and saw themselves as acting on behalf of the Palestinian cause. Both shouted “Free Palestine” as a battle cry.

But the backgrounds of the two attackers suggest that they were motivated by different extremist currents. One was aligned with far-left revolutionary politics, the other with militant Islamism. The D.C. shooter, Elias Rodriguez, is a US-born son of Puerto Rican and Mexican parents, raised in Chicago. Early reports uncovered that Rodriguez had a history of involvement with a Marxist activist scene. In fact, he had been associated with an American far-left revolutionary group, the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), until at least 2017. The PSL, which is outspokenly anti-Zionist, quickly disavowed Rodriguez after the shooting, stating that he was never a formal member and that his brief association years ago had long since ended. However, evidence suggests that Rodriguez may have remained on the periphery of such networks. In April 2025, just a month before the attack, a photograph from a Chicago socialist bookshop event appears to show a man resembling Rodriguez participating in a PSL study group.