Suspect accused of Israeli embassy murders had ties to CCP-linked groups, showed hatred of Israel

The man charged with gunning down two Israeli embassy employees in the heart of the nation’s capital has historical ties with a Revolutionary Socialist Marxist political party with links to the Chinese Communist Party. That group regularly praises the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel. 

Local and federal law enforcement charged 31-year-old Elias Rodriguez with murder, saying he approached two Israeli embassy staffers as they left an event at the Capital Jewish Museum on Wednesday night and gunned them down at close range, killing both of them. Israeli officials identified the victims as Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, and said the couple were dating and planning to get married. The FBI criminal affidavit indicates they were both shot in the back. 

Rodriguez' motive a matter of public record

After killing the couple, Rodriguez walked into the museum and asked for police to be called so he could be arrested, according to the authorities. Shortly after the attack, he was captured on video chanting “Free, Free Palestine!”—a common refrain used by pro-Palestine, anti-Israel protesters.

According to court documents, Rodriguez told the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police, “I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza, I am unarmed,” after they arrived on scene. 

Rodriguez has long-standing ties to several radical left groups who describe themselves as "socialist revolutionaries." These groups, who have been at the center of the pro-Palestine protest movement against Israel’s war with Hamas, appears to have ties to the Chinese Communist Party and Cuba. 

Shortly after the Wednesday shooting, Rodriguez was identified in a 2017 article published by LiberationNews.org—the media arm of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL). The Daily Wire reported that Rodriguez was depicted at a protest holding a sign with anti-capitalist messaging from the ANSWER Coalition. The article, which has since been deleted, allegedly described Rodriguez as being “from the Party for Socialism and Liberation."

The Anti-Defamation League's CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, said on Thursday morning’s CNN News Central: “The ADL Center on Extremism monitors extremist groups, like the Party of Socialism and Liberation, or PSL, that this man was associated with. That is an anti-capitalist, anti-Western, and anti-zionist group that regularly employs antisemitic rhetoric.”

PSL defended Hamas’ brutal October 7, 2023, attack on Israel. It released a statement the same day, asserting that the murder of more than 1,200 Israelis—mostly civilians—was "not terrorism." 

“It was in this context of an existential threat to the Palestinian people’s very survival that the resistance organizations chose to launch a bold counter-offensive,” the PSL wrote. "This does not constitute terrorism. It is a basic fact of history that any people who are subjected to an occupation will resist that occupation.” 

The network of CCP-linked sponsors

Since the shooting, PSL has distanced itself from Rodriguez in a statement posted to X. “We reject any attempt to associate the PSL with the DC shooting,” the group wrote. “Elias Rodriguez is not a member of the PSL. He had a brief association with one branch of the PSL that ended in 2017. We know of no contact with him in over 7 years. We have nothing to do with this shooting and do not support it.”

Both the PSL and Liberation.org websites are shrouded in mystery. Both domain names are registered privately, meaning that the public cannot see who owns or runs the web pages. Moreover, although the PSL has a website asking for donations and accepts credit cards, there is no transparency about who processes the credit cards, nor any disclosure about the use of a donor's credit card info and personal data. It mentions a "processing fee" but does not tell prospective donors what that fee amounts to, or who is getting the fee.

The ANSWER Coalition raised money using Facebook in 2017 for Rodriguez to attend the People’s Congress of Resistance, a two-day gathering at Howard University in D.C., to "chart a path of nationwide grassroots resistance and mobilization to defeat Trump's reactionary program of unrestrained capitalism,” The Washington Free Beacon reported.

"Help us send Elias Rodriguez, a young resister and son of an Iraq war veteran, to the People's Congress of Resistance,” ANSWER Chicago reportedly wrote in a Facebook post that has since been deleted. 

The ANSWER Coalition, which stands for “Act Now to Stop War and End Racism,” was founded three days after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, to oppose military action. One year later, the group organized a large anti-war demonstration in Washington against the potential U.S. invasion of Iraq, boasting a 200,000-strong crowd. 

The coalition organized many more protests against the war after it began in 2003. In recent years, the group has encouraged supporters to attend protests calling for an end to the U.S. economic blockade of Cuba and has called for “Peace, Not War with China!” 

The network's nexus: Neville Roy Singham

Both PSL and its closely aligned cousin, ANSWER Coalition, are part of a larger network of protest and organizing groups which have connections to the Singham Network, a collective of nonprofits, fiscal sponsors, and alternative news sources tied to pro-CCP businessman Neville Roy Singham. 

Singham lives in Shanghai and is identified as a “conduit for CCP geopolitical influence,” according to a report from the Network Contagion Research Institute—a research institute that monitors "cyber-social threats.” The group found that PSL and the ANSWER Coalition are jointly involved in the Shut It Down for Palestine (SID4P) protest movement, started by the New York-based The People’s Forum—a group funded by Singham. 

The People’s Forum was a driving force behind protests in New York City that terrorized Columbia University’s campus and which sprouted other campus demonstrations at Fordham and City College. Manolo De Los Santos, the executive director of The People's Forum, was at a Fordham University protest in May 2024. He told Just the News that he had been at protests "across the city," including Columbia and City College, to support the students in their demonstrations against Israel.

The forum was also at the center of more recent protests against the detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a leader in the pro-Palestine and anti-Israel encampments at Columbia University, by the Trump administration, Just the News previously reported. The Department of Homeland Security wanted to deport Khalil, arguing that he “led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.”

Singham started funding The People’s Forum a “few years ago,” according to one of the group’s tweets. “For months we’ve been the target of a campaign that alleges our funding comes from ‘dark money.’ A few years ago we met Roy Singham, a Marxist comrade who sold his company & donated most of his wealth to non-profits that focus on political education, culture, & internationalism,” the group posted in December 2021. 

According to a profile of Singham by The Free Press, the financier’s wealth came from his software consulting company, Thoughtworks, which he sold in 2017 to Apax Partners for $785 million. The same year, The People’s Forum was founded in New York near Times Square. 

Singham has a radical Marxist past that eventually grew into an admiration for China and its socialist system. 

When he was 17, he joined the radical Marxist League of Revolutionary Black Workers and went to work in a Chrysler plant in Detroit. He helped to organize strikes and joined in “daily, intense self-criticism sessions,” the Times reported. In 1974, Singham was investigated by the FBI over potential “activity in groups engaged in activities inimical to the U.S.” 

Singham married Jodie Evans, the co-founder of the radical left-wing group Code Pink, in 2017. The antiwar group has become increasingly pro-China in recent years. Singham now lives in Shanghai, China, where he backs or promotes several pro-China news outlets, such as the India-based website Newsclick, The Free Press found. 

Singham's CCP-link was raised to Biden's Justice Department

The New York Times also reported on Singham’s close ties to the CCP. Influence Watch says Roy Singham has been accused of being associated with the propaganda arm of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) after The New York Times' report. The Times said its investigation “tracked hundreds of millions of dollars” to groups affiliated with Singham.  

The public reporting on Singham and his pro-CCP views prompted then-Senator Marco Rubio and Senator Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., to recommend last July that the Biden Justice Department probe ANSWER for possible violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) over Chinese ties and asked for a briefing on any investigative efforts into the network of U.S.-based groups supported by Singham. 

“As you are no doubt aware, the CCP is engaged in an all-out information war against the United States. Beijing seeks to influence foreign audiences around two key precepts: ‘united front work’ and ‘external propaganda work,’” Rubio and Graham also wrote in the letter. “Make no mistake: we must not allow the CCP to succeed in winning the information war it is actively waging against our country,” they added. 

Writing to Merrick Garland two days after the initial letter and asking for a progress report, the senators said: "Many of these groups have increased their activism in the wake of Hamas’s October 7, 2023, brutal terrorist attack on Israel. These groups have not only disrupted Senate proceedings, but have engaged in violent, antisemitic riots in many cities across the United States.”

Lawmakers have called again for the Trump Justice Department to investigate the finances of the groups following the murders on Wednesday. "Every single one of these groups and their funding should be investigated immediately,” Senator John Cornyn, R-Texas, posted to X. “This attack goes beyond antisemitism. We must know if this is domestic terrorism.”