On Wednesday night, two employees of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC, were shot and killed.
Yaron Lischinsky had intended to formally propose to Sarah Milgrim in Jerusalem the next week before they were shot dead outside a Jewish museum in Washington.
Here is what we know about the two Israeli embassy employees who were shot dead after attending a young professional networking event late Wednesday, as their killings heighten the global attention on the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza.
Yaron Lischinsky
Since 2022, the 30-year-old has been employed as a researcher at the Israeli embassy in Washington.
He had dual nationality and was born in Nuremburg, Germany, before relocating to Israel when he was sixteen.
Lischinsky attended Hebrew University in Jerusalem and Reichman University in Tel Aviv.
When teaching Lischinsky at Reichman, Israeli ambassador to Berlin Ron Prosor called him a “brilliant” and “curious” student.
According to Hebrew University humanities professor Nissim Otmazgin, Yaron had aspirations of becoming a diplomat.
According to the German-Israeli Friendship Society, Lischinsky was fluent in German. According to society president Volker Beck, Lischinsky’s “interest in German-Israeli relations and ways to achieve peaceful coexistence in the Middle East brightened the environment around him.”
When Sarah Milgrim began working at the Israeli mission, he got to know her.
Israel’s ambassador in Washington, Yechiel Leiter, said Lischinsky had purchased a ring. Lischinsky was to pop the question in Jerusalem the following week, and the couple was scheduled to take a plane there on Sunday to visit his family.
Sarah Milgrim
Sarah Milgrim, 26, was pictured on LinkedIn as a happy woman with curly red hair standing between the US and Israeli flags. Since 2023, she has been employed in the embassy in Washington in the public diplomacy division.
Milgrim graduated from the University of Kansas with a degree in environmental science and was a prominent choir member at her school near Kansas City.
She also went to a UN University for Peace program and an American university in Washington. According to her father Robert, she holds a master’s degree in sustainable global development and international studies.
The impending proposal was unknown to the Milgrim family. Her father claimed that when the Israeli ambassador called them Wednesday night to let them know about the young couple’s passing, he told them about it.
Nancy, Milgrim’s mother, told The New York Times that she had been preparing to take her daughter’s dog to Washington on Sunday.
Prior to the ambassador’s call, she had followed her daughter to the Capital Jewish Museum after seeing warnings on her phone about the incident in Washington.
According to the father, “I pretty much already knew,” The New York Times reported.
Milgrim worked for a year in Israel after graduating from college with the Tech2Peace organization, which brought together young Israelis and Palestinians for tech training and peacemaking workshops.
She said on LinkedIn that she has conducted research “on the role of friendships in the Israeli-Palestinian peacebuilding process.”
“She was doing what she loved, she was doing good,” her father told the American press.
