From what can be gathered so far, the attack on Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation synagogue in Manchester was undoubtedly antisemitic. The timing can hardly have been a coincidence – Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar – and it carries a grim echo of the atrocities infamously committed by Hamas on 7 October 2023 at a music festival in Israel.
At a holy place of worship, on the solemn day of atonement, three people, including the perpetrator, are dead, and three more are in hospital. The police response was rapid and lethal, and undoubtedly saved many more people from harm, especially as the subject was, according to Stephen Watson, the chief constable of Greater Manchester Police, wearing “a vest which had the appearance of an explosive device”. The synagogue was full of children – a terrifying thought.
At a time when we’ve been reminded of the grave flaws in some forces, Greater Manchester Police showed the best of professionalism.
The prime minister was right to cut short a visit to Denmark and mobilise the Cobra emergency apparatus to find out what happened and discover if there are any more imminent threats. Security for synagogues and other Jewish centres, already tight, has been stepped up, and both the Community Security Trust and Jewish communities have to be afforded all the resources and protections they require.
Not even the Secret Intelligence Service can yet know for certain if this is a one-off “lone wolf” attack or part of a campaign – or if it will now be followed by copycat assaults. Defences have to be strengthened. Sir Keir Starmer and the mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, have said that they will do all they can to protect Jewish communities, and that is some reassurance.
For the Northern city, it is a reminder of the threat of such terror, stirring memories of the Manchester Arena bombing in 2017 by an extremist, which claimed 22 lives and injured hundreds. There is no escaping the fact that this is an explicitly antisemitic attack and has to be treated as such.
For the Jewish community in Britain, and around the world, it obviously comes as a shock – a horrendous, cowardly, murderous terror attack – but the terrible fact is that many Jews in Britain felt that a day such as this would eventually come.
Tragically, their fears have been realised, and they are right to raise painful questions about the protection the authorities have given to them in recent years. To give one example, just last month, an individual was smearing excrement on synagogues and other Jewish centres around Golders Green in London. It is relatively small-scale violence, but it took too long to apprehend a suspect, and Jewish people had cause to feel that it was not taken seriously enough. That is the kind of complacency that makes people feel fearful and vulnerable – and, if carried out with impunity, can invite more serious acts.
Incidents of Jew-hate of every kind have been escalating for some years, and the trend has accelerated since the 7 October attacks and the war in Gaza that followed. The facts have to be faced. Certain social media platforms have descended into shameful digital antisemitic propaganda channels, spreading vile blood libels and antisemitic conspiracy theories old and new.
Some of this material is generated by racial supremacists on the right, and much of it from elements on the left, sadly including for a time in Labour circles, where sympathy for the suffering of the Palestinians shaded, and sometimes lurched, into virulent hatred of Jews, holding the British Jewish community to account for the actions of the Israeli government 2,000 miles away.
It is wrong that some Jewish people felt frightened to venture into central London during pro-Palestine protests, intimidated by the allegations of a new Holocaust inflicted by a “Nazi” Israeli state. Physical attacks on synagogues and Jewish schools have increased. None of this is acceptable, as it would not be for any other group.
Every police force should look again at what lessons can be learned from this latest Manchester attack. The security services will also have to explain how this particular plot was missed, allowing for the fact that very many more are thwarted, and it is impossible to have complete surveillance of every possible threat.
Albeit in vain, the British authorities should press social media firms such as X to look again at moderation and restraining open incitement to racial hatred. There will surely be a full inquiry into what happened.
The last few weeks have seen an excess of open racism and violent language, and it is incubating a more dangerous political culture. What happened in Manchester was, first and foremost, an evil attack on Jewish people. It is also a further test of Britain’s traditionally tolerant, multicultural democracy.
