Police on guard at the scene of a stabbing incident at Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation synagogue in Manchester, England, today. Photo / Andrew Testa, The New York Times
When Manchester, England, joined Boulder, Colorado, Washington, and other cities in the tragic roll call of anti-Jewish violence, British Jews were shocked and saddened by the recognition that anti-Semitism, already on the rise in their country, had mutated again into something deadlier.
Like other European countries and the United States, Britain has recorded a marked rise in anti-Semitic incidents in the nearly two years since the attack by Hamas militants on civilians in Israel and the Israeli military campaign in the Gaza Strip that followed.
There had been no recent acts of targeted violence at synagogues in Britain, although Jewish people and places of worship have featured in several terrorist plots thwarted by the police over the past decade.
“We haven’t had an incident like this here,” said David Feldman, the co-director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Anti-Semitism in London. “This is, in the most literal sense, extraordinary.”
The attack is likely to intensify the debate in Britain over the war in Gaza, which has set off a spike in anti-Semitism around the world and a global backlash against Israel.
The news that a man had rammed his vehicle and stabbed worshippers outside the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation was deeply jarring, recalling the attack in Boulder in June on a rally for hostages held by Hamas, and the fatal shooting of two staff members of the Israeli Embassy in Washington two months later.
Speaking today, Feldman said he was reluctant, without knowing the identity or motive of the assailant, who was killed by the police, to draw a direct link between the rise of anti-Semitic incidents and this attack, in which two people were killed and four injured. But he said it would reverberate through the Jewish population in unpredictable ways.
“It clearly shifts the horizon of possibility,” Feldman said. “How the Jewish people will process that remains to be seen. What one can say with most confidence is that Jewish people will process it in different ways, because the British Jewish population is more divided than it has ever been.”
In the hours after the attack, a blanket of fear and grief fell over synagogues and Jewish community centres across the country.
Police officers fanned out to guard these sites, forming a conspicuous presence at the gates of JW3, a popular Jewish centre in North London, where officers were seen speaking to a rabbi.
The Community Security Trust, a British charity that tracks anti-Semitism and co-ordinates security measures at Jewish institutions with the Government and police, warned people not to congregate outside communal premises and urged synagogues to keep their doors closed at all times.
The trust has sounded alarms about rising anti-Semitism, reporting 1,521 anti-Semitic acts between January and June of this year.
Those included physical assaults, property damage, graffiti, online abuse, and three cases of what it called “extreme violence”. It said that was the second-highest number of anti-Jewish incidents the group had ever recorded in the country.
The highest ever number — 2019 cases — was recorded in the first six months of 2024 and followed the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel in which about 1200 people were killed.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza has killed tens of thousands, many of them also civilians.
Britain’s Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, acknowledged the wave of anti-Semitism. “We must be clear it is a hatred that is rising once again, and Britain must defeat it once again,” he said after chairing an emergency Cabinet meeting.
Even before late Thursday’s attack (NZT), some commentators said, the charged atmosphere in Britain had left many Jews fearful of violence in their everyday lives.
“I’ve witnessed in the past few years friends who are Jewish who are genuinely concerned about their own safety, concerned about their children going on the Tube, concerned about their elderly parents on public transport, and I think it’s a reflection of how society has become so visceral and venal,” Eric Pickles, a Conservative member of the House of Lords who served as Britain’s special envoy for post-Holocaust issues, said in an interview with Times Radio.
London, like other European capitals, has been the site of large, mostly peaceful, weekly rallies protesting against Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, which has precipitated a widening humanitarian crisis. There have been sporadic, smaller pro-Israel marches.
But the politics of protest have become fraught.
The British Government recently declared one of the most visible pro-Palestinian groups, Palestine Action, to be a terrorist organisation after some of its activists broke into a Royal Air Force base, sprayed red paint into aircraft engines and damaged the planes with crowbars.
In September, the police in London arrested more than 800 demonstrators who rallied in support of the group. Most were detained for holding placards supporting Palestine Action, though a handful were charged with assaulting police officers.
Starmer recently announced that Britain was recognising a Palestinian state, joining France, Canada, Australia, and Portugal.
He said the decision was prompted by the humanitarian crisis in Gaza — the “starvation and devastation are utterly intolerable”, Starmer said — and that it could help salvage the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.
Britain has blacklisted two far-right members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Cabinet: the Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and the Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich. It also partially suspended exports of weapons to Israel.
Starmer has faced calls from members of his Labour Party to take stronger measures against Israel.
Some criticised him for making his pledge to recognise a Palestinian state conditional, unlike France. Others faulted him for not imposing a total ban on weapons sales.
Britain continues to supply components for F-35 fighter jets, which the Israeli Air Force has used in strikes on Gaza.
Cries of “Genocide!” have echoed from the Labour backbenches in Parliament, though the British Government has stopped short of declaring the Israeli Government guilty of that in its conduct of the war in Gaza.
The harrowing images of suffering in Gaza have divided Britain’s Jewish community as well, according to Feldman.
He said recent surveys suggested that “the Zionist idea seems to be losing popularity among British Jews”, particularly younger ones.
The Runnymede Trust, a British think-tank that focuses on social justice issues, said in a recent report that the current approach to protecting Jews from hate crimes in Britain was not working and might even have exacerbated tensions by nurturing a perception among other groups that they are not as zealously protected.
Addressing British Jews, Starmer said, “I promise you that over the coming days, you will see the other Britain, the Britain of compassion, of decency, of love. And I promise you that this Britain will come together to wrap our arms around your community and show you that Britain is a place where you and your family are safe, secure and belong.”
The Prime Minister, whose wife is Jewish, clearly hopes his words will offer comfort.
In the coming days, as the assailant’s background is examined and his motives dissected, the attack in Manchester may well further inflame the debate over a Middle East war and the angry waves it has sent around the world.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Mark Landler
Photographs by: Andrew Testa
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