Sarah Milgrim fought for peace. Her murder does nothing for starving Gaza | Opinion
Sarah Milgrim, the 26-year-old Prairie Village native killed along with her partner as they left an event on getting aid into Gaza — yes, that’s why she and Yaron Lischinsky were at the Capital Jewish Museum on Wednesday night — sounds like exactly the kind of young woman this world needs more of.
I’m going to repeat that: “The meeting last night,” her father Robert Milgrim told me in a phone interview, “was about getting more supplies into Gaza.” That this is how this couple spent their final hours tells us something about them. And makes it even more painfully obvious that whatever their killer thought he was accomplishing he did not.
Even as a kid, Sarah’s father said, she was a vegetarian who “took in strays, and didn’t want to step on a bug. She respected all forms of life, and worked in animal rescue. Her passions were helping animals, people and the environment.”
That never changed, either. Her roommate at the University of Kansas, Amanda Birger, speaking at a vigil held at the Jewish Community Center in Overland Park Thursday evening, said she was not only a dog and bunny mom, but, “wouldn’t let me kill a spider. She would gently place it on a piece of paper and take it outside.”
Her friend, Birger said, “was the ultimate peacemaker in her personal life and her professional life, and her whole career was devoted to promoting peace in Israel.”
Some not very fine people on both sides
The suspect arrested in the killings, who reportedly shouted, “Free, free Palestine!” and told police at the scene, “I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza,” freed nobody and fed nobody.
Those rationalizing his actions because of the deplorable situation in Gaza, where people are starving and should not be, made me think about what Donald Trump said after the hideous “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville in 2017. There were “some very fine people on both sides,” he said in defending those protesting the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee at the same rally where marchers carrying torches screamed, “Jews will not replace us.” To me, there were not.
But now, there are some not very fine people on both sides. There have always been antisemites on the far right, and now some on the far left sound like they think these murders are justified because this couple — did I mention they were coming out of an event discussing how to get more aid into Gaza? — worked for the Israeli Embassy.
“She was an idealist,” Robert Milgrim’s friend Tom Fox told me. “We go to spin class together,” said Fox, the former editor and publisher of National Catholic Reporter, “and almost every day he would speak with great, great pride about his daughter. So I’m just left with this terrible feeling that you can’t go back in time” and change what happened outside that museum, “and with the enormous loss of this exceptional young woman who wanted to change the world.”
Peacebuilding, religious harmony, sustainable practices
Sarah graduated with “highest distinction” with a B.A. in environmental studies and while earning her graduate degree from American University in global sustainability and international studies, spent two semesters in Costa Rica.
She was extremely serious about her Jewish faith, and in her work for the embassy, which began right after Hamas attacked Israel, organized delegations to Jerusalem. Before that, she’d worked for an organization that brought Palestinians and Jews together.
On her LinkedIn profile, Sarah Milgrim herself said this: “My passion lies at the intersection of peacebuilding, religious engagement, and environmental work.” She wrote about her “commitment to fostering understanding between different peoples” and said, “I am eager to contribute to organizations dedicated to bridging divides, promoting religious harmony and advancing sustainable practices.”
In interviews with several news outlets, the organizer of the museum event, Yoni Kalin, said that after the killings, the shooter came inside, dripping wet and looking like he was in shock. Not knowing who he was or what he’d done, they spent 10 minutes or so comforting this stranger, “calming him down, giving him water, taking care of him.”
Kalin did not want it to be forgotten, he told the BBC, that “what we were discussing was bridge building, and then we were all hit over the head with such hatred.”
“This event was about humanitarian aid,” he told the Associated Press. “How can we actually help both the people in Gaza and the people in Israel? How can we bring together Muslims and Jews and Christians to work together to actually help innocent people?”
Yaron Lischinsky, who had bought an engagement ring for Sarah, was born in Germany and moved to Israel as a teenager. A friend described him to the BBC as a “devout Christian.” When I asked Sarah Milgrim’s father if that was correct, he said that although he knew and very much approved of Yaron, someone he described as an “incredible, compassionate individual,” he didn’t know what his religion was.
“His father is Jewish, his mother is Christian and he supported Sarah in her faith. Those details hadn’t been worked out.”
It’s a loss for all of us that they won’t get to do that, because this couple clearly had so much to offer this broken, wasteful world.
This story was originally published May 23, 2025 at 5:08 AM.
