It is still early in the investigation, and key details remain unconfirmed. But what is already known about this morning’s attack in Manchester is horrifying. At least two people are dead, as well as the attacker. Three others are in a ‘serious condition’. The attack occurred outside Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue, shortly after 9.30 a.m., as members of the Jewish community gathered for prayers on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar.
Let no one pretend this came from nowhere. Let no one feign surprise
According to Greater Manchester Police, the attacker used a vehicle to ram into pedestrians before stabbing at least one individual. Armed officers responded within minutes. The suspect was shot but, according to witnesses, appeared to rise again, prompting a second round of fire. Bomb disposal units were later seen surrounding the body. Though authorities have not confirmed whether he was wearing an explosive device, the protocol and urgency of the response strongly suggest that possibility, as do some reports from the site.
A major incident was declared within minutes. Operation Plato, the UK’s emergency response to a suspected ‘marauding terror attack’, was activated. Counter-terror police and MI5 are now involved in the investigation.
At the time of writing, police have not released the name of the attacker or officially stated a motive. But it does not take a great leap of imagination to discern the likely nature of what occurred. This attack bears the hallmark of Islamic terrorism. The method – ramming, stabbing, and potential bombing – is grimly familiar. And the choice of target – a synagogue, on Yom Kippur – suggests deliberate timing, designed to cause maximum fear, disruption, and symbolic harm to British Jews.
To state what should be obvious: synagogues are not random venues. They are not theatres or shopping centres or commuter hubs, caught up in indiscriminate violence. They are specific, communal, identifiably Jewish. This was an attack on Jews because they were Jews, gathering to pray on our most sacred day.
That in 2025 this must still be said is its own indictment. British Jews, just 0.48 per cent of the population, have lived under heightened threat for years. Our synagogues, schools, and community centres require guards, cameras, fences, and entry protocols. The Community Security Trust (CST), a communal charity, operates a national control centre and deploys trained security volunteers across the country. These lived necessities were born of painful experience.
Today is the brutal consequence of what so many Jews have been warning about, and living with, for years.
Since the Hamas attacks of October 2023 and the subsequent war in Gaza, the UK has witnessed an unprecedented wave of anti-Jewish hatred. CST recorded over 4,000 antisemitic incidents in 2023, double the previous year, and the highest ever documented. Last year brought more of the same: verbal abuse, online threats, vandalism, assaults, intimidation of children in schools, harassment of Jewish students on campus, doctors spreading anti-Jewish rhetoric without sanction. In London, Manchester, Birmingham, and beyond, Jews have felt exposed and abandoned, and have warned over and over again only to be ignored.
The atmosphere is toxic. Many Jews have stopped wearing visible signs of identity. Some no longer speak Hebrew in public. Conversations about emigration, once marginal, have become widespread. The mood is not just anxious; it is alienated. And this will only make it worse. Many of us feel our country has abandoned us and worse encourages those who hate us, giving them license to express their hatred more openly and brazenly every day.
All of this has happened against a backdrop of regular ‘anti-Israel’ marches where chants spill into open hatred of Jews, sermons from mosques which have been exposed on national television spew invective, and media narratives frame Jewish safety as a political inconvenience. A climate like this does not stay rhetorical. It incubates violence.
This is the real climate crisis of our era, and yet ‘net zero’ for Jew-hatred is nowhere on our government’s agenda. Instead, our Prime Minister rushed to recognise a Palestinian state days before a serious plan was unveiled by America and Israel to end the war in Gaza and start a process to encourage the Palestinians to reject extremism and violence. The UK emboldened Hamas and those who have marched against Israel and Jews week after week on our streets. The global warming we ought to be most worried about is the rising temperature of debate and news coverage when it comes to Jews and Israel, for today’s attacks like today’s is where that leads.
Keir Starmer has said ‘additional police assets’ will be deployed to synagogues nationwide and promised that the government ‘will do everything to keep our Jewish community safe’. He has expressed his horror that such an attack took place on Yom Kippur. This is hardly reassuring. Many blame him for his government’s absurd emboldening of Hamas, and constant vindictive, anti-Israel actions and statements. The fish rots from head.
Words of sympathy are necessary, but they cannot substitute for years of ignored warnings. Repeated failures to arrest hate preachers, to discipline antisemitic professionals, to prosecute violent demonstrators, or to confront institutional media bias have left the Jewish community exposed. It is not the fault of Jews that we must secure ourselves through voluntary communal organisations – it is the fault of a society that allows hatred to fester.
And now, on the Day of Atonement, in a city where Jews have lived for centuries, in a once great nation where Jews have contributed disproportionately in every field, we face the all too familiar spectacle of our sacred space turned into a crime scene. Jewish blood is cheap, it seems.
Let no one pretend this came from nowhere. Let no one feign surprise. The signs have been visible. The hate has been loud. And the consequences are now bleeding into the streets.
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