Hours after meeting with relatives of hostages held in Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tried to comfort two families that had already buried their children—the two victims of the antisemitic terror attack at the Capital Jewish Museum.
Netanyahu spoke during a memorial for Sarah Milgrim, 26, and Yaron Lischinsky, 30, held at the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C. The two were scheduled to get engaged the week after the gunman, who said “free Palestine” after he was arrested, shot them as they left an event for young Jewish professionals. Relatives of both of the embassy staffers attended the memorial, both in person and virtually.
“When Sarah first told us about Yaron, when she met him early on—this is even before the relationship had really blossomed, this was soon after she started working at the embassy—she said, ‘Dad, when you meet him, he’s a real gentleman,’” Robert Milgrim told reporters before the ceremony.
Considering his daughter’s prediction about Yaron, Milgrim began to cry. He recalled that she said, “‘You’re going to love him, and he’s just like you.’”
“Then when I met him, I fell in love with him immediately,” Milgrim said.
Nancy Milgrim, Sarah’s mother, shared a message of peace with reporters.
“We all have to stand up to hate, and the murders of Sarah and Yaron didn’t accomplish anything,” she said. “So we all need to stand together and fight. Fight for there to be peace amongst everyone.”
Netanyahu told attendees that the two were “beautiful in life, united in death.”
“The tragedy was so evocative,” he said. “It hit the chords of the hearts of millions, Jews and non-Jews alike. President Trump talked to me and he said, ‘What a beautiful couple. What a great tragedy.’”
Many years after Netanyahu’s brother, Yoni, died during the 1976 Entebbe raid, Netanyahu asked his father, Benzion Netanyahu, how he carried on after his son’s death.
“Life is a raging river, and it carries you to new places. The scar always remains, and the memory is always there, so is the sadness,” Netanyahu told attendees, quoting his father. “But life can give you new life, if you let the current take you.”
Yoav Katz, the embassy’s minister counselor for political affairs, recited a yizkor memorial prayer for Lischinsky and Migrim, and relatives said kaddish, the Jewish mourner’s prayer.
The embassy unveiled a bench and cherry tree in its courtyard to memorialize Lischinsky and Milgrim. It also named a studio in their honor and installed a mezuzah made from shrapnel from the Iron Dome, which Netanyahu brought to Washington.
“There is something unique in Jewish tradition when it comes to mourning and grief,” Eliav Benjamin, the embassy’s deputy chief of mission, told attendees.
“It’s gradual, allowing it to sink in, allowing us to absorb the tragedy of the loss,” he said. “For us all, the loss of our beloved Yaron and Sarah is like holding in our hearts a loss that we will bear forever.”
Robert Milgrim is among those still absorbing that loss.
“All that was accomplished was that they destroyed a beacon of hope with the two of them,” he said. “They were fighting as hard as they could to make things better, and it’s just so senseless.”
“It makes no sense whatsoever,” he said.
