I’m shocked by the news that two young staffers at the Israeli embassy, Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky, were murdered last night at an American Jewish Committee event in Washington last night. I serve on the New England regional board of the AJC, an organization devoted to confronting antisemitism, upholding democratic values, and advocating for the right of the Jewish state to exist in peace and security. Like all Jewish organizations including synagogues, AJC has had extensive security at its events for years to protect against all kinds of attacks. People who aren’t Jewish but who attend a bar mitzvah service or a talk or social event hosted by an organization like AJC are often astonished by the level of security we have to live with. But nothing is foolproof, and the security wasn’t enough to prevent what seems to have been a political assassination in the nation’s capital.

It’s always important to let the investigation proceed in politically charged cases before drawing firm conclusions about why the killer did what he did. According to Newsweek, the suspect, who turned himself in on the scene, began chanting “Free, free Palestine” and “There is only one solution, intifada revolution” when he was arrested. He has a college degree in English and had been identified in print as an activist with the Party for Socialism and Liberation (though the PSL has denied he is a party member).

I feel confident in saying that this tragedy will not keep American Jews from exercising our rights as Americans to assemble and to speak our minds, any more than the many antisemitic attacks and incidents in recent times have done. But according to a recent survey, lots of American Jews now feel unsafe wearing Jewish symbols in public, attending Jewish gatherings, or expressing their views in public. That needs to change.

I hope that those who have unwittingly helped to create the intellectual climate in which this murder happened take time to reflect. I am not blaming anyone but the murderer for the murders. I do think, though, that the multi-decade campaign to expand the traditional definitions of such morally charged terms as genocide and apartheid has led to a climate where a young, “educated” person can think that political violence against Jews and Israelis is justified. And the somewhat obsessive focus on Israel, Zionists, and Jews should give people who think of themselves as people of good will and who I am sure are basically people of good will some pause.