They were a beautiful couple who came to enjoy an evening in Washington's cultural center.

That's Israeli ambassador to the United States, Yehiel Leiter, at a press conference Wednesday night.

And the couple he is talking about is Yaron Lyshinsky and Sarah Milgram.

The pair was gunned down and killed in front of the Capitol Jewish Museum on Wednesday night.

Lashinsky and Milgram were headed for Jerusalem on Sunday. Their trip to Israel would have been the

first time Milgram met Lyshinsky's family. And according to the Israeli ambassador Lyshinsky had bought a ring

and was planning to propose. The event they were

attending at the museum was for young professionals from different embassies focused on bridge

building in the Middle East, North Africa region. Event organizer, Jojo Drake Kalin, told Sky News the theme

was turning pain into purpose. So it's painfully, painfully ironic that at a time when we were speaking about bridge building,

that someone came in with such hate and destruction, we were wanting to counter the us

versus them narrative and come together in humanity and shared humanity.

A yell at Razin Bator, a friend of Milgrams, says she joined the embassy after Hamas' attack on Israel.

Sarah told me that she joined the embassy shortly after October 7th, after she felt a high rise

of anti-Semitism around her, unlike anything she experienced before.

But building bridges seems to be getting harder, not easier, a year and a half into Israel's war with Hamas,

with tens of thousands of people dead and humanitarian belief efforts under stress.

Consider this a horrific attack at an event aimed at overcoming differences has only ended up highlighting them.

From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly.

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