For Rep. Greg Landsman (D-OH), the murder of two Israeli Embassy employees outside the Capital Jewish Museum last week brought to life fears he has harbored for months, amid rising extremism in anti-Israel demonstrations.

The Jewish Ohio congressman told Jewish Insider in an interview on Wednesday that days before the shooting, while attending a public event in downtown Cincinnati, he had a “really vivid image of being shot in the back of the head. What I saw was myself laying on the ground in the way in which you would be if you had been shot in the head … I wasn’t alive, I was dead.”

“And then, literally two or three days later, that’s what happened outside the Jewish museum. That’s what happened to these two innocent people,” Landsman continued. “When I saw it, I immediately thought, that’s where they are. They’re on the ground dead … It all then just felt so inevitable that this was going to happen.”

He said he feels the country has been on a “trajectory” toward such violence by anti-Israel agitators, and is worried that it will continue without a change in course. Landsman said that he and other members of the Jewish community, particularly fellow Jewish lawmakers, have had growing fears of violence akin to last week’s murders since the Oct. 7 attacks.

“It’s the way in which they get in your face and they speak to you and they’re saying these incredibly threatening things, like, ‘You’re going to pay for this,’” Landsman explained, referring to anti-Israel demonstrators. “That was a line I heard many, many times. Once in a Target parking lot with my children … This was what we were afraid of.”

A group of anti-Israel protesters also spent days camped outside Landsman’s house, including overnight, yards from his bedroom.

“This is the trajectory, incidentally, of all blood libels, when Jews are accused of murder, from the blood libel around Jesus to the blood libel around genocide,” he said.

Landsman said that, in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks, he’d been able to have meaningful conversations with large groups of constituents about the attacks and the developing war in Gaza and about their differing positions on it.

But over time, he continued, “those groups have gotten smaller, but more intense. The numbers have shrunk but the rhetoric and the vitriol has grown, has worsened.”

Landsman issued a lengthy statement earlier this week outlining his fears, the links he sees between the shooting and “blood libels” spread about Israel and the Jewish community and the path forward to counter antisemitism.

He told JI he initially wrote the statement to make sense of the shooting and his thoughts around it, and to process what he and his family have been experiencing. He said he put it out in the hopes of helping people — even those who disagree with him about Israel policy — to think about their behavior and decisions and to lay out a “better path.”

“This is an incredibly complicated set of situations. The murders on Wednesday were just horrific and maddening,” Landsman said. “We’ve got to go down a different path and I tried to lay that out, and hopefully that’ll be part of the conversation. There is a difference between protest and chaos, there’s a difference between free speech and hate speech and violent rhetoric. And the more people know where those lines are, the better.”

Landsman argued that leaders at all levels have a responsibility to educate themselves and help their communities “understand where the lines are” between criticism of Israel and antisemitism. “There’s a way to speak out on whatever side that helps people get closer to solving a problem and doesn’t ever lead anyone to believe they should go pick up a gun and go kill Jews.”

He said that political leaders who have perpetuated narratives accusing Israel of genocide or turned a blind eye to violent rhetoric from anti-Israel demonstrators have fed into the milieu of “anti-Israel outbursts — I don’t want to call them protests” that culminated in last week’s shooting. 

“I don’t want to say that they contributed to what happened [last] Wednesday, although all of these roads ended up there,” Landsman said. “I think silence can be a contributing factor to something getting worse.”

He said there have also been failures to properly distinguish protected free speech from unprotected speech, and protests with proper permits adhering to relevant laws and the “chaos” that has characterized others. 

Landsman emphasized that he’s a strong advocate for protest and freedom of speech, but that anti-Israel protests like those outside his home have routinely breached relevant laws governing such demonstrations.

When protests cross a line into dangerous territory, Landsman said, “you can’t just sit there and say, ‘Oh, it’s free speech.’ And I think that has happened across the board. That’s what happened at Columbia. It’s what happened outside my house.”

He offered particular condemnation for professors at schools such as Columbia University for encouraging anti-Israel protesters. The students, he noted, in some cases faced strong punishment, while many of the faculty, having tenure, remain largely unaffected.

“They took these 18-, 19-, 20-year-old kids who needed guidance, gave them none, pushed them into the lion’s den, and then walked away,” Landsman said. “If you’re in a position of leadership, you’ve got to lead, and leading means engaging, and engaging means problem-solving and working through something.”

One of Landsman’s main recommendations for addressing antisemitism and trying to prevent further violence is passing the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which was derailed in the Senate by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. He suggested that much of the discourse claiming the bill would silence freedom of speech is driven by a lack of understanding of the legislation and its use of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism.

Landsman said the legislation, and any issues around antisemitism and hatred, should not be politicized, noting that many lawmakers on both sides are guilty of doing so. He said that the strident opposition to the legislation from both sides shows the extent of antisemitism, and the ways that actors on the right and left are reluctant to grapple with the antisemitic nature of things they say or believe.

He added that the bill does not silence freedom of speech, but it does help clarify the ways that attacks on Israel and the Jewish community can be antisemitic and can help encourage training and education to “help everyone, not just Jewish students.”

Though the legislation focuses exclusively on campus issues, Landsman said that adopting the IHRA definition through the legislation will provide a signal and a tool for other communities and society at large to understand antisemitism, and would help tackle one of the epicenters of antisemitism nationwide.

“I do think helping college campuses do this better is a huge step in the right direction,” Landsman said. “It’s all connected … You get [the bill] passed and then you start applying that to big tech, you start applying it to … the medical field … I think it becomes a vehicle or similar bills become relevant for other spaces. But you’ve got to get this one done.”

He also encouraged individuals and institutions, like college campuses, to take the time to look at and utilize resources from nonpartisan Jewish community institutions like the American Jewish Committee and work with such groups to better understand antisemitism and the dangers of violent anti-Israel ideologies — and of ideologies seeking to eliminate Palestinians.

Landsman, characterizing the Trump administration’s rescinding of federal funds for universities and student visas as unproductive, also urged the administration to work with groups like AJC to put together plans to address the issue and work with universities to implement them. 

“It’s not TV stuff, it’s not headline-grabbing stuff. It’s a real plan where, over the course of the next couple of years, we’re going to make some changes that will help dramatically improve peoples lives,” Landsman said. “And to some extent, that’s what the bill calls for.”

Pro-Israel leaders in the United States on Thursday connected the murder of two Israeli Embassy employees outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington to the anti-Israel advocacy seen on the political extremes throughout the country since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, characterizing it as a culmination of such rhetoric and, in some cases, the failure of some politicians to denounce it.

The suspected shooter, Elias Rodriguez, shouted “free, free Palestine” and “I did it for Gaza” following the shooting, according to an eyewitness and video from the arrest. He reportedly published a manifesto railing against Israel.

Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) said that the attack should be a signal to the left that it needs to rethink its rhetoric on Israel and Zionism. He compared the anti-Israel movement in the United States to a “cult” that has been stoked online and is using inherently violent slogans while its members “try to hide behind this idea that it’s free speech to intimidate and terrorize members of the Jewish community.”

He said that too many on the left have failed to call out antisemitism in the anti-Israel movement.

“Why can’t you just call it what it is, and then address and assert the pressure on the aggressor,” which is Hamas,” Fetterman said. “I can’t even imagine having to live with that ever-present antisemitism and what? Why can’t people just acknowledge and call that what it is?”

Fetterman predicted that the same elements of the left that have supported Luigi Mangione, the alleged assassin of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, will also rally behind Rodriguez.

“What part of my party does this come from where it’s like, we try to defend or try to justify assassinating an executive in broad daylight or … somebody [who] guns down” two people at a Jewish event, Fetterman asked incredulously.

Israeli Ambassador Yechiel Leiter connected the shooting to the anti-Israel protests seen on college campuses and elsewhere in the country.

“The point of the matter is that on campuses around this country, where ideas — these are the temples of ideas — where smart ideas, intelligent ideas, moral ideas, truthful ideas, are supposed to be taught, we have useful idiots running around in support of the destruction of Israel,” Leiter said at a press conference.

“This is done in the name of a political agenda to eradicate the State of Israel,” Leiter added. “The State of Israel is now fighting a war on seven fronts. This is the eighth front, a war to demonize, delegitimize, to eradicate the right of the State of Israel to exist.”

He also connected rising global antisemitism to countries like France that have spoken out against Israel and are moving to recognize a Palestinian state.

A coalition of 42 Jewish organizations, in a statement, described the murders as “the direct consequence of rising antisemitic incitement in places such as college campuses, city council meetings, and social media that has normalized hate and emboldened those who wish to do harm.”

William Daroff, the CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said on X, “There is a direct line between demonizing Israel, tolerating antisemitic hate speech in the public square, and violent action.” 

“We are now witnessing the deadly consequences of months of relentless antisemitic incitement — amplified by international organizations and political leaders across the globe — since the horrors of October 7,” Daroff said. “This is not a debate over policy; it is the mainstreaming of hatred, and its consequences are measured in blood.”

Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) said on X the attack was “the deadly consequence of normalizing Jew-hatred.”

“Since October 7, antisemitic attacks have surged — fueled by violent chants to ‘globalize the intifada’ and slurs like ‘dirty Zionist,’” Gottheimer said. 

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), highlighting a tweet from a local anti-Israel group that praised the attack, said that, “Violence is not a bug but a feature of virulent Anti-Zionism.”

Arizona state Rep. Alma Hernandez called out a series of progressive lawmakers, saying, “spare us the fake outrage.”

“Two Israeli diplomats were murdered in cold blood—and you dare act concerned? Y’all have spent years fueling the hate and antisemitism that’s now exploding across America. Don’t pretend to care,” Hernandez continued, in an X post. “You are constantly surrounded by keffiyehs and “Free Palestine” and have pushed rhetoric that’s radicalized Americans into thinking murdering Jews and harassing them in the streets will somehow “liberate” Palestine and end the so-called genocide. No thanks.”

“We don’t want prayers from politicians who support individuals and organizations that promote this hate and who are being actively supported by said individuals and organizations while they run for office,” Hernandez added.

“You can’t support chants of ‘Globalize the Intifada’ and then be ‘appalled’ when people act it out,” Georgia state Rep. Esther Panitch said on X in response to a statement on the attack from Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) that did not acknowledge that the victims worked for the Israeli embassy and condemned “violence” broadly. Panitch also criticized other progressive Democrats who issued statements on the attack.

Panitch added, “Fascinating that those who campaigned against the Jewish community’s right to define their own experience of antisemitism are the ones who call ‘Globalizing the Intifada’ peaceful protests. The same ones who can’t say the word antisemitism in their posts.”

Jordan Acker, the University of Michigan regent who has been repeatedly targeted with antisemitic harassment and vandalism, drew a direct line between those incidents and demonstrations on the University of Michigan’s campus, and the Wednesday night murders.

“This isn’t protest. It’s a threat. This is what antisemitism looks like — and it’s escalating,” Acker said. “This is part of a terrifying trend: Jews in America being hunted, harassed, and attacked for being visibly Jewish — for existing in public. When we call it antisemitism, we’re told we’re overreacting. That our fear is political. That our pain is inconvenient. We’ve been gaslit for 18 months. Enough.”

He also called out progressives directly, saying “antisemitism isn’t any less dangerous when it comes wrapped in ‘progressive’ language.”

In response to the attack, some of the most prominent far-left critics of Israel on Capitol Hill have offered what many in the Jewish community have seen as half-hearted and inadequate responses.

“My heart breaks for the loved ones of the victims of last night’s attack in D.C. Nobody deserves such terrible violence. Everyone in our communities deserves to live in safety and in peace,” Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) said, linking to an article highlighting that the victims, Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky, were Israeli Embassy workers, but not noting their backgrounds or the circumstances of the shooting in her own post.

Omar noted that the shooting took place at the Capital Jewish Museum but did not acknowledge the victims’ backgrounds and condemned violence broadly.

“I am appalled by the deadly shooting at the Capital Jewish Museum last night. Holding the victims, their families, and loved ones in my thoughts and prayers,” Omar said. “Violence should have no place in our country.”