Last week we learned that Elias Rodriguez, the man who murdered two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, DC, had left behind a manifesto in which he justified the use of violence. Here's a bit of it.

The impunity that representatives of our government feel at abetting this slaughter should be revealed as an illusion, then...

A perpetrator may then be a loving parent, a filial child, a generous and charitable friend, an amiable stranger, capable of moral strength at times when it suits him and sometimes even when it does not, and yet be a monster all the same. Humanity doesn't exempt one from accountability. The action would have been morally justified taken 11 years ago during Protective Edge, around the time I personally became acutely aware of our brutal conduct in Palestine. But I think to most Americans such an action would have been illegible, would seem insane. I am glad that today at least there are many Americans for which the action will be highly legible and, in some funny way, the only sane thing to do.

The same journalist who was first to publish that manifesto, Ken Klippenstein, has now gotten hold of a bunch of personal chat logs in which Elias discussed his views with friends over several years, including right up to the date of the shooting. 

People who knew him say he was not anti-Semitic in the sense that he never was known to make comments about Jewish people in general, not even jokingly. However, he did hate Israel and America. He was a full on Marxist who seemed to admire Stalin.

“One of the biggest things that stalin [sic] didn’t do wrong was ending the most antisemitic regime ever yet known 2 man,” Rodriguez responded...

The chat logs reveal a man who hated the Republican and Democratic parties, Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, Donald Trump, the right and left, the “bourgeoisie,” the United States, the West, and, of course, Israel. 

He was rooting for terrorists and their organizations around the world. For instance, he seemed to be happy about Hamas' 10/7 attack on Israel.

• “Just saw an incredibly gory video of the aftermath of Israeli troops trying to get dressed for the ambush absolutely massacred by hamas [sic] fighters lmao.”
• “Love checking back in with the news every few hours like, ‘Hm I wonder if Israel still exists?’”
• Asked if he loved it, Rodriguez replied: “You don’t often get to credibly wonder if Israel is over yet today or not.”

He also celebrated Iran and Russia because of their resistance to the US and was a fan of Hamas and Hezbollah.

“He was a big proponent of ‘the emerging resistance axis’ of Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, Assad’s Syria,” a friend recalled. “He seemed pretty vocally in favor of Hamas for years — way before 2023. He’d always hated Israel and would call it ‘The Little Satan.’”...

“Honestly i’m still just feeling sad about the murder of hassan nasrallah,” Rodriguez said in another post, adding: “It hurts when people are killed specifically for doing what’s right, when so many are afraid to…”

He was also bummed out when Israel killed Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the 10/7 attack.

So overall, he was a very extremist left-wing nut but his decision to kill seems to have been motivated more by his hatred of Israel (and support for Hamas and Hezbollah) than by his hate for Jews as a group. His act of terror was more political than ethnic, at least according to the evidence we have. Since he's still alive, we'll probably hear a lot more about this in the coming months.