The suspected terrorist charged with fatally shooting two Israeli Embassy staffers in Washington, DC, heaped scorn on his father’s military service in Iraq as he tried to raise money to attend a socialist rally in the nation’s capital.
Elias Rodriguez, 31, of Chicago, had been at the center of a small GoFundMe page aimed at getting him to attend a People’s Congress of Resistance meeting in Washington in September 2017.
The suspect raised money on GoFundMe to attend the Washington D.C. conference in 2017. GofundmeRodriguez was charged with first-degree murder, the murder of foreign officials, causing the death of a person through the use of a firearm and discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence in federal court on Thursday.
Law enforcement sources said Rodriguez used a high-end German-designed H&K 9mm pistol in the killings. He had bought the weapon years ago, according to sources.
Sources also said he was well known to Chicago police as a left-wing rabble-rouser at various protests dating back years.
In addition to protesting against the war in Gaza, he attended protests against Amazon, and joined rallies for Black Lives Matter and in the case of Laquan McDonald — a teenager who was killed by police in 2014.
Follow The Post’s coverage on Israeli Embassy staffers killed in DC
- Israeli Embassy staffers ID’d as couple fatally shot by terrorist who yelled ‘Free, free Palestine’ near DC’s Capital Jewish Museum
- How left-wing Chicago social justice warrior Elias Rodriguez allegedly became homegrown anti-Israel terrorist
- Slain Israeli Embassy staffer Sarah Milgrim spoke out over antisemitic messages at high school 8 years before fatal shooting
- DC Jewish Museum shooting victim Yaron Lischinsky’s body to be returned to Israel Friday
- Twisted cryptocurrency launches in tribute of suspected terrorist Elias Rodriguez
In his plea for travel money, Rodriguez criticized America’s invasion of Iraq as a “genocidal imperialist war,” and scorned his father’s service as an Army National Guardsman.
“When my dad came home from Baghdad, he came with souvenirs. One was a magazine pouch with a warning in Arabic to back away or my dad would shoot and kill you,” Rodriguez wrote.
Rodriguez yelled ‘free Palestine’ after the shooting. Katie Kalisher via Storyful“He joked that the print was so small an Iraqi would be dead long before they had a chance to read it. He also gave me a patch of Iraq’s national flag, one he ripped off of an Iraqi soldier’s uniform because he could.
“I don’t want to see another generation of Americans coming home from genocidal imperialist wars with trophies,” the terror suspect added.
Rodriguez touted that his mission for attending the 2017 meeting was “a personal one for me… to put a final end to imperialist war.”
Throughout the GoFundMe page, which raised $240, Rodriguez slammed Democrats for failing to put an early end to the war in Iraq, with the murder suspect claiming it’s up to ordinary citizens to put an end to tyranny.
The People’s Congress of Resistance did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
Rodriguez was arrested Wednesday for the murders of Israeli Embassy staffers Yaron Lischinsky, 28, and Sarah Milgrim, 26, a couple who were set to get engaged next week.
He had allegedly shouted “Free, Free Palestine” during the shooting near the Capital Jewish Museum, raising speculation that the attack was motivated by the war in Gaza.
Police are probing whether Rodriguez blasted out a 900-word anti-Israel manifesto online leading up to the shooting.
Federal investigators are also seeing if an unhinged social media account that allegedly posted “death to America” and “death to Israel” — along with “I voted for Hamas” — is linked to Rodriguez, law enforcement sources said.
