For Immediate Release
June 10, 2025
Contact: Taylor Haulsee
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Tonight, Speaker Johnson and Leader Jeffries hosted a bipartisan vigil to honor the lives of Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky, two Israeli embassy staffers who were killed in a violent act of antisemitism after leaving an event at the Capital Jewish Museum last month. Speaker Johnson and Leader Jeffries were joined by Israeli Ambassador to the United States Yechiel Leiter; CEO of the American Jewish Committee Ted Deutch; Israeli embassy staff, and Members of Congress.
Watch Speaker Johnson’s remarks here
Below are Speaker Johnson’s remarks as delivered:
We gather tonight to honor the memory of two precious souls, Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky. Our hearts go out to the families and friends of Sarah and Yaron, and all those who have come from the Israeli Embassy tonight and the AJC to honor their memory. We want to thank you all for being here.
We took every precaution to arrange this evening and ensure the safety of everyone in attendance. And sadly, that’s because it’s a dangerous time to be a Jewish American. The two innocent lives we honor today should still be with us. Sarah and Yaron were young, and they were in love. They led honorable lives of advocacy at the Israeli Embassy, and they devoted themselves to peace in the land that they so loved.
The monster who murdered them was not motivated by peace, but something very different. He went to a Jewish museum to hunt down Jewish people. And we want to be crystal clear tonight: this is targeted antisemitic terrorism. There are no shades of gray and there is no other way to describe it.
As we’ve seen in the week since, this violence is sadly not isolated. Just 10 days after these murders, a group of Jewish Americans, most of them elderly and one a Holocaust survivor, were pelted with Molotov cocktails in Boulder, Colorado. In Colorado and in our capital city we see two cold-blooded monsters separated by 2,000 miles, but united in their sick hatred of the Jewish people. It just defies understanding.
Both individuals chanted a slogan that is all too familiar on college campuses and city streets since the horrors of October 7th: ‘Free Palestine.’ It’s the chant of a violent movement that has found common cause with Hamas, and it’s a movement that has lost hold of the difference between right and wrong, between good and evil, between light and darkness and barbarism.
The chants of the terrorists who pillaged Israel on October 7th are almost indistinguishable from those of Hamas sympathizers here on our own shores. They proclaim that violence is righteous, that rape is justice and that murder is liberation.
They have created a culture of lies that puts a bounty on the heads of peace-loving Jewish Americans. And the insidious spread of this violent ideology has emboldened the evil worldview of people like the one that took the lives of Sarah and Yaron.
Where is the outrage for these two young victims? There have been no national protests for them or the many victims of antisemitic violence all around this country, no calls in the streets to say their names. No chants for justice or peace.
We cannot let these depraved antisemitic terrorists silence us. We must stand up and protect our Jewish brothers and sisters. The Republicans and the Democrats here today stand united in that cause and condemning the violence and the rhetoric that directly aides and abets it. We have a responsibility to recommit ourselves to the cause for which Sarah and Yaron lived and for which they literally gave their lives. That is the cause of peace.
I am reminded of the scripture that says blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. Tonight, we honor two of God’s children, tragically lost too soon.
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