Ministers aren’t always the quickest to take accountability in a time of crisis. So, it is easy to see why, after yesterday’s atrocity at a Manchester synagogue, the line being pedalled by the Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood this morning was that responsibility for the attack lies with ‘the assailants alone’. Snappy rhetoric, but it won’t keep Britain’s Jews any safer from harm.
The trajectory of radicalisation that seems to have taken the suspect Jihad Al-Shamie from hateful thoughts to murderous action takes not just a village, but an institutionalised nation. That’s a growing void of responsibility no number of words can paper over.
Rampant anti-Semitism wrapped in pro-Palestinian sentiment has normalised hatred of Jews
Consider the risk factors at play ahead of yesterday. Since Hamas terrorists attacked Israel on 7 October, 2023, rampant anti-Semitism wrapped in pro-Palestinian sentiment has normalised the hatred of Jews in this country. The supine response of police officers and even government ministers to punish, let alone prosecute, incitement to violence has driven the zone of impunity ever outwards.
In 2019, a gunman in Germany used Yom Kippur to target Jews, killing two people. Sadly, it ought to have been plain that yesterday would have been a vulnerable day for worshippers here. The Jewish community is so small in this country that, if you want to perpetrate a mass casualty attack, it is the ideal time to target Jews together and magnify the horror. Terrorists, let’s not forget, exist to create terror.
Moreover, just last week, an Islamic State spokesman specifically called on followers to ‘punish Jews, Christians and their allies’ in Europe via shooting, stabbing and car attacks. When all these red flags are assembled, together with intelligence that’s undoubtedly not in the public domain, the threat level and required posture ought to have been plain.
We have been asked to focus on the bravery of armed police officers who arrived at the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue within seven minutes of being alerted to the attack yesterday. Notwithstanding emerging news that a victim may have been killed by a police weapon, it is right to celebrate the speed of the police’s response. But it is also right to wonder why officers weren’t there before the attack. We can’t have a gold standard for counter-terrorism that is measured by killing a terrorist after he’s successfully killed. We must start the fight well ahead of the bloody consequences.
We will need an explanation of police threat management in due course. But hearing the Prime Minister vow to increase ‘police assets’ to protect the Jewish community is hardly the hallmark of proactive national security. The Home Secretary was keen to point out that the government pays £18 million a year to the Community Security Trust, a Jewish agency that provides protection outside synagogues. But these are unarmed volunteers, who risk paying the ultimate price. I’m well used to the sight of armed police protecting churches, such as the one I used to go to in rural Northern Ireland. But setting this as the new normal, even if that is the outcome of a security review, is a pathetically low bar for a free society.
The response to burgeoning sectarian hatred in this country must not focus ‘on the assailants alone’, or even on an elevated police presence. It must look at society as a whole, including a re-examination of the relationship between rights and responsibilities. There’s our ‘right’ to propagate hatred, grievance and division via freedom of expression; our ‘responsibility’ is to uphold values of decency and communal solidarity.
The shameful scenes we saw of pro-Palestinian marchers dancing with glee and attacking police in London and – for God’s sake – Manchester hours after the attack is emblematic of the problem. Rights have no agency without the duties and obligations that underpin them. The social contract between governed and government depends on this balance being upheld, bought into and if necessary enforced. What we saw last night should chill all of us – after an act of naked anti-Semitic terrorism, we had British citizens on the streets baying for a ‘global intifada’. There is simply no point in trying to separate these forces.
The question of where we draw the line between rights and responsibility will be tested on the streets again this weekend when supporters of the proscribed terror group, Palestine Action, march in London tomorrow. The Metropolitan Police and the government have begged Defend our Juries, the activist group organising the rally, to call it off. So, far the group has refused.
It is now time for Britain to demonstrate it has the will to face down the protests that have enflamed and animated anti-Semitism in the UK. It is time for communities and ordinary citizens to recognise their own responsibilities; for policing to form part of a wider effort against extremism rather than pose the sole solution. We don’t yet know what forces may have driven Al-Shamie, a Syrian-born child who had all the advantages of a safe haven here in the United Kingdom, to turn that into a slaughterhouse for others. But the answer does not lie in Westminster.
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