**More on Yaron Lischinsky.....
Who was Yaron Lischinsky? For starters, he was a ‘super solid’ Israeli Christian, diplomat, ‘true Zionist,’ and the brother of an ALL ISRAEL NEWS journalist
Please pray for the families and friends of Yaron and his girlfriend as we grieve their unconscionable murder.
PHILADELPHIA – After addressing 1,600 Evangelical pastors at a conference and briefing them on the horrors of the October 7th war and the explosion of Jew hatred around the world and how Christians can and should stand with Israel, I woke up this morning to more horrific news.
Two young Israeli diplomats – Yaron Lischinsky, 28, and his girlfriend, Sarah Milgrim – were murdered, shot to death at close range, attending an event hosted by the American Jewish Congress in Washington, D.C.
That news was hard enough to take.
But then I learned that Yaron was the brother of Hanan Lischinsky, a friend and a colleague of mine and our team.
Hanan is a strong and devout Israeli follower of Jesus and a very impressive and accomplished journalist who works for ALL ISRAEL NEWS and serves as our News Desk Manager.
Yaron was also a strong follower of Jesus – well-known, well-respected, and well-loved throughout the Israeli Christian community – as well as a veteran of serving in the Israeli Defense Forces, a diplomat working for Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and a passionate soccer player.
Yaron and Sarah were not only like-minded, best friends, and madly in love.
They were also planning to get married.
In fact, Yaron had already purchased the ring and the two were planning to fly back to Jerusalem next week to get engaged.
Learning all this hit me even harder.
“I held heartbreaking phone calls today with the parents of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim,” said Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar.
“I conveyed condolences on behalf of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the State of Israel,” Sa’ar continued. “Yaron and Sarah…were true Zionists, proudly serving the State of Israel, and will be deeply missed by their families, friends, and all who knew them. May their memory be a blessing.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Yaron and Sarah “a young, beautiful couple.”
They were murdered by “a brutal terrorist,” he said, who “wanted to kill Jews” and shouted, “Free Palestine!” as the police arrested him.
SHOCK, EXHAUSTION, AND TURNING TO THE SCRIPTURES FOR COMFORT
We at ALL ISRAEL NEWS are in total shock.
We can barely process that such a bright and beautiful couple, so full of joy, so full of love for their country, so eager to serve their nation and advance peace, so full of fun plans for their future, was cut down last night by a lunatic demanding the world “Free Palestine” by any means necessary, including cold blooded murder.
We can barely process the fact that they were murdered in the capital of Israel’s biggest and most important ally.
We are grieving.
Not without hope.
We know beyond the shadow of a doubt Yaron and Sarah are in heaven.
But like every Israeli, we’re exhausted by this October 7th war and by the explosion of Jew-hatred in the U.S. and around the globe and by the violence that never seems to end.
Please, I ask Christians around the world to pray for the families and friends and colleagues of this beautiful couple, including everyone they worked with at the Israeli Embassy in Washington.
The passage on my heart this morning comes from the Apostle Paul’s second letter to the believers in Corinth.
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ. But if we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; or if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which is effective in the patient enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer; and our hope for you is firmly grounded, knowing that as you are sharers of our sufferings, so also you are sharers of our comfort.” (2 Corinthians 1:3-7)
YARON WAS ‘A SUPER SOLID BELIEVER’
Over the last few hours, I’ve been connecting with Yaron’s family and friends to get a fuller picture of his life.
One agreed to speak to ALL ISRAEL NEWS but asked that we not use his name.
“Yaron was humble, sweet, and kind,” he told me.
“He was a super solid believer,” the friend continued. “The whole family really loves the Lord.”
“Yaron also loved soccer – he really loved it. He played in Germany with a pretty good club, as I recall, and he loved to organize pickup soccer games in Jerusalem that my friends and I played in.”
“He was one of my first friends that I made when I moved to Jerusalem.”
“He was a really smart guy and obviously very interested in geopolitics,” he continued. “When I first met him, he was studying at Hebrew University, and it was so encouraging to see him become a diplomat and then get sent to Washington to work at the Israeli embassy.”
WE’RE EXPERIENCING A ‘TSUNAMI’ OF ANTISEMITISM
Gal Lavie, a senior staff member for The Joshua Fund and an officer in the IDF reserves, was also a friend of Yaron’s.
I spoke with him this morning for a special report we recorded for our “Inside The Epicenter” podcast that my wife, Lynn, and I co-host for The Joshua Fund.
We’re experiencing “a tsunami” of antisemitism, he told me, and this is one more terrible example of it.
“This is such a tragic event, not just Yaron’s murder but also losing his almost-to-be fiancée, Sarah – it’s so painful,” Gal continued.
“I’ve known Yaron and one of his younger brothers and they’re very much involved in the Christian community in Israel.”
“When I’m thinking about the Lischinsky family, it brings to mind the fact that they moved to Israel more than a decade ago, from Nuremberg to Israel.”
“I first met Yaron as I was involved in youth ministry in Israel. And he was one of those, you know, new faces – kind of like the new kid on the block, in a sense. And you know how hard it is to integrate into a new culture, a new society, a new place, a new culture.
And I think he did it tremendously well.”
“I mentioned to my wife when I found out that he got murdered that he’s one of those persons that really enter into your heart because he was so intelligent, so peaceful, such a gentle soul, and that’s how I remember him. He was also very brilliant.”
“He was such a sweet guy and, of course, it’s not something that you take for granted,” Gal added, noting that he first met Yaron as “he was moving from the stage of being a teenager, someone who was just finishing high school, and then moving into the military. Then we got to know him as he was in the IDF.”
Gal described him as eager to be “serving his country, very Zionist, very idealistic.”
“He was for the Abraham Accords. He was for peace. He was for reconciliation and trying to find [the way] we need to walk in to maintain and to strive for peace.”
“It’s heartbreaking” to think that he’s now gone “but I’m so grateful that he’s in heaven.”
A MOROCCAN ARAB: YARON WAS ‘A DEVOUT CHRISTIAN’ AND ‘THE FINEST FRIEND I’VE EVER HAD’
On the podcast, I shared a beautiful post that I saw on X, the social media platform previously known as Twitter.
It was written by Zineb Riboua, a Moroccan writer and researcher who works with the Hudson Institute in Washington.
We both follow each other on X and I was so touched by what she wrote.
“Yaron Lischinsky was the finest friend I’ve ever had – brilliant, kind, and endlessly thoughtful,” she began.
“A devout Christian and a gifted linguist, he spoke German, Hebrew, and Japanese. He was full of curiosity and always brimming with ideas. I don’t think we ever had a conversation that didn’t leave me inspired to write something new.”
“He loved America. He was excited about the future, about finally visiting Texas, and about the life he and his beloved fiancée were building together. I was supposed to meet her today.”
“They are both gone. And the loss is immeasurable. The world has lost two extraordinary souls. And I have lost a dear friend who made every moment brighter.”
In another post, she wrote, “I’ve had lunch with Yaron a few days ago and I was supposed to see him and his girlfriend, Sarah, today. It’s just devastating.”
Like many Moroccans, Zineb Riboua is grateful for and supportive of her King’s decision to join the Abraham Accords in 2020.
So, it wasn’t difficult at all for her to make friends with Israelis.
“In Morocco, being anti-Israel just makes you look stupid,” she wrote on X.
“Since [King] Mohammed V, Morocco has always protected its Jews and sided with Israel,” she added.
She was almost immediately attacked on X by someone who wrote that “Zionism should be eradicated.”
“@zrboua is one of the dumbest ****** out there and she’ll see regret every statement she made about normalizing with genociders.”
Zineb replied, “I’d rather die than be like you.”
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Please pray for the families and friends of Yaron and his girlfriend as we grieve their unconscionable murder
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