<h6><strong>Eduardo González</strong></h6> <h4><strong>Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares condemned this Thursday the murder of two employees of the Israeli Embassy in Washington and warned that "nothing justifies antisemitism or this barbaric act."</strong></h4> "I have landed in Washington DC with the terrible news of the murder of two members of the Israeli Embassy in the US," Albares wrote on social media. "My strongest condemnation and my solidarity with the families of the victims and the people of Israel. Nothing justifies antisemitism or this barbaric act," added the minister, who is in the US capital to meet with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Marco Rubio also condemned “in the strongest possible terms the murder of two staff members from the Embassy of Israel in Washington,” which represents “a brazen act of cowardly, antisemitic violence.” “Make no mistake: we will track down those responsible and bring them to justice,” he concluded. For her part, the European Union's High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Kaja Kallas, joined the multitude of voices condemning the murder of the two Israeli embassy employees. "There is no place in our societies for hatred, extremism, or antisemitism," she wrote on social media. Two Israeli Embassy employees in the United States, a man and a woman, were shot dead Wednesday night outside the Jewish Museum in Washington, DC, where an American Jewish Committee (AJC) event was being held. The alleged perpetrator, identified as "Elías Rodríguez, from Chicago, Illinois," fired the shots shouting "Free Palestine" and is in custody. The news was announced this morning by Kristi Noem, Secretary of Homeland Security of the United States Government, who specified that the shooting occurred overnight near the Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs identified the murdered men as Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim and denounced the "brutal terrorist attack" that claimed their lives. <h5><strong>Yolanda Díaz</strong></h5> Meanwhile, Yolanda Díaz, second vice president of the government and leader of Sumar (a minority party in the coalition government), urged the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday to recall the Spanish ambassador to Israel, Ana Salomón, for consultations and to adopt economic sanctions against Benjamin Netanyahu's regime, in the same way it has done with Russia since the invasion of Ukraine. Speaking to the press during the opening of Working for Diversity 2025, Díaz described the "live genocide" taking place in the Gaza Strip as "unacceptable," which has resulted in the "massacre" of more than 50,000 people. She called on Spain to take a more forceful stance against the "genocidal state" of Israel. The vice president's statements follow the European Commission's decision to review the Association Agreement between the EU and Israel due to violations of its human rights clause, and a day after Albares announced his decision to summon the Israeli chargé d'affaires in Madrid, Dan Poraz, to protest "the intolerable shooting by the Israeli army" at a diplomatic delegation in the West Bank, including a member of the Spanish Consulate General in Jerusalem. The Minister of Culture and spokesperson for Sumar, Ernest Urtasun, has been even more forceful, urging, in statements to TV3, an "escalation" of diplomatic pressure on Israel by recalling the Spanish ambassador, urgently approving Sumar's legislative proposal to establish a total embargo on the sale of arms from Israel, and suspending the EU trade agreement with Tel Aviv, since "blocking the entry of Israeli capital and investment into the European Union, as well as the trade of goods, would be an effective pressure measure with very significant effects." From the People’s Party, the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, criticized this Wednesday the "anti-Semitism" of the government, which is "so angry with some and so little angry with others" and "throws itself into the arms" of China while "wanting to lecture Israel." In response to these remarks, Equality Minister Ana Redondo accused Ayuso of "stirring up shadows and ghosts from the past that generate violence."
