Who’s Really Encouraging Attacks Like the One on a Synagogue? Look to Our Leaders

The attack in Manchester is evidence not of a rising tide of antisemitism but of something else entirely: a growing and dangerous political illiteracy being cultivated in our societies

JONATHAN COOK

It’s well past time to burst the highly manufactured narrative bubble that says terror attacks like the one yesterday at a Manchester synagogue are proof of a rising tide of antisemitism.

They are not. They are evidence of something else entirely: a growing and dangerous political illiteracy.

This kind of political illiteracy conflates Jews and Israel. It’s disastrous. So let’s see who is encouraging it?

1. Israel very much wants such political illiteracy – and has been actively cultivating it for decades. Israel does so by falsely describing itself, and legislating itself, as a state that supposedly represents every Jew in the world – even those Jews who despise the ethnic supremacist ideology of Zionism, which has rationalised for so long the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, apartheid rule over Palestinians, and now the genocide of Palestinians.

Israel proudly boasts that its dispossession and oppression of the Palestinian people, its settler-colonial agenda, is done in the name of all Jews in the world, whether Jews approve or not.

2. This political illiteracy exists because it has been nurtured by Jewish public figures in Britain like Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, who constantly identifies the Jewish community with Israel and its military; who lauds the Israeli military’s crimes against Palestinians, even its slaughter of children; and demands that protests in solidarity with Palestinians be outlawed to protect Israel.

3. This political illiteracy exists because Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer tells the public that Zionism – a settler-colonial, supremacist political ideology that absurdly claims “Jewish liberation” depends on the ethnic cleansing, apartheid and now the genocide of Palestinians – is a normal state of affairs.

This political illiteracy exists because he equates anti-Zionism, opposition to a racist political ideology, with antisemitism. In Starmer’s perverse logic, all Jews support the oppression and murder of Palestinians, so anyone who objects to that oppression can only do so because they hate Jews.

4. This political illiteracy exists because Home Secretary Shabana Mahmoud ties an attack on a synagogue – on Jews – to the protests trying to stop British complicity in a genocide thousands of miles away in Gaza.

She wants the protesters to show “some humanity” and “solidarity with the Jewish community” in the wake of the Manchester attack. As though this is some kind of zero-sum game in which our opposition to a genocide has to come at the expense of a grieving Jewish community.

As though, conveniently for the government, Jews think with one mind, speak with one voice, in wanting the protests against Israel’s genocide, and British government complicity in it, to be ended while they grieve, or possibly to be ended indefinitely.

As though there is a binary choice between either grieving for the 30 or so Palestinian children killed each day by Israel in Gaza, or sharing the grief of British Jews. As though the British public, and more specifically British Jews, are incapable of feeling these two griefs at the same time.

5. This political illiteracy exists because police forces are urging peaceful, anti-genocide protests planned for this weekend to hold off – for the postponement of demonstrations designed to shame the British government over its two-year complicity in the genocide and its proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation for trying to end the UK’s supply of weapons to Israel.

As though these peaceful protests, while scores of Palestinian children are murdered each day in Gaza, can wait a few more weeks till the police are ready to handle them, till Britain’s Jewish community feels more secure. As though a sense of urgency about ending the slaughter is, once again, evidence of “insensitivity” to “Jewish concerns”, of antisemitism.

As though even the 1,000 or more protesters ready to silently hold a sign saying they oppose genocide should understand that they need arresting – and delay till the police have the manpower necessary to criminalise them under the UK’s shameful terrorism laws.

6. And most of all, this political illiteracy exists because day after day the UK media reinforces it, treating Israel as the the representative of British Jews more than Britain itself, treating Jews as a single, homogenous unit incapable of differentiated thought or of dissent, and treating anyone who objects to this, even Jews, as antisemitic.

If there is a lesson to be learnt from the Manchester synagogue attack, it is this: by outlawing protest against genocide, by declaring it “terrorism”, the British government has fuelled an equally depraved counter-worldview – one that says, if peaceful protest is not allowed, then violent protest is the only way forward.

This lesson is not new. In 1962, then US President John F Kennedy – hardly a radical – warned: “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

The same can be said of protest: if peaceful protest is denied, then violent protest is assured.

The political illiteracy manufactured by western establishments doesn’t help Palestinians. Instead it hands western establishments more ammunition to crack down on our right to speak out in solidarity with those being annihilated in Gaza.

Which is precisely why Israel, its apologists in the Jewish community, the British government, the police and the media will do everything they can to keep nurturing it. And if the price is that Jews get murdered in Britain’s streets, then that price, they appear to think, is one worth paying.

[Many thanks to Matthew Alford for the audio reading of this article.]

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This article (Who’s really encouraging attacks like the one on a synagogue? Look to our leaders) was created and published by Jonathan Cook and is republished here under “Fair Use”

Starmer Chose Islam Over Britain and Now We See the Consequences

The bodies of the slain are not even cold, and yet the pro-Palestine brigade are on the streets of Britain, celebrating their deaths.

FRANK HAVILAND

It was only ever a matter of time before British Muslims decided actions speak louder than words, particularly with regards to the Jewish community. Like the Hamas attacks of October 7th, yesterday’s terrorist atrocity at the Heaton Park Synagogue was timed to grizzly perfection. With Yom Kippur the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, it was obvious that security would be taking a backseat to worship. Melvin Cravitz and Adrian Daulby were tragically killed by the aptly named Syrian, Jihad al Shamie, who drove his car into worshippers and proceeded to stab bystanders before being shot dead by armed police.

With his customarily leaden delivery, the British Prime Minister treated us to a series of empty, disingenuous words in relation to the terrorism. The Manchester attack, he said, was “absolutely shocking.” Really, Sir Keir? If that is the case, perhaps he could explain why the Community Security Trust (CST) had received a 400% increase in funding in the wake of the October 7th attack, alongside the concomitant rise in antisemitism? “We will do everything to keep our Jewish community safe,” Starmer added. Well sure, everything except stop importing and pandering to the problem:

This morning’s attack is absolutely shocking.

I’m on my way back to London to chair an emergency meeting, and additional police assets are being deployed to synagogues across the country.

We will do everything we can to keep our Jewish community safe. pic.twitter.com/bNUfGbWwfq

— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) October 2, 2025

The Manchester attack is the inevitable consequence of consecutive British governments’ appeasement of Islam. While undoubtedly cowardly and self-serving, there are obvious and somewhat understandable reasons for this:

• Islam is the most volatile religious group in Britain, accounting for 67% of terror attacks since 2018, and approximately three quarters of MI5’s caseload.
• Muslims are the fastest growing demographic in Britain, increasing by 1.2 million between 2011 and 2021—32% of the UK’s total population growth.
• Unlike Jews, Sikhs, Christians or atheists, Muslims are not seeking to integrate into Britain.

The last point is not the view from the “far-right,” but that of former Equality Tsar Trevor Phillips. Regrettably, that is an opinion shared by four out of ten Brits.

At every possible juncture, it is obvious that Islam is being handled with kid gloves by the British State. Jews and other citizens are expected to obey the law, but Muslims routinely enjoy immunity from prosecution. As a case in point, consider the two-tier policing observed whenever aggressive pro-Palestine protests come face-to-face with peaceful Jews. While inveterately opposed to intervening with the pro-Gaza mob, the Metropolitan Police were more than happy to threaten a Jewish man with arrest. What for? For the crime of being “openly Jewish” and therefore “provocative,” in the vicinity of pro-Palestine supporters.

Far worse however, was the despicable abuse broadcasted to Jews in March 2021. A convoy of vehicles drove through the Jewish quarter of North London, draped in Palestinian flags, screaming “Fuck the Jews! Rape their daughters!” Despite identifying the vehicles and arresting four men on suspicion of racially aggravated public order offences, the Crown Prosecution Service concluded 18 months later that there was not enough evidence to prosecute.

Hate crimes are all the rage in Britain these days. So much so in fact that general members of the public are routinely arrested for innocuous statements like “I love bacon,” uttered in the vicinity of Muslims. That being the case, and with antisemitism at record levels, one might expect a similar courtesy to be afforded our Jewish friends. Apparently not. Back in 2023, a preacher at an East London Mosque told his followers:

Oh Allah, curse the Jews and the children of Israel. Oh Allah, curse the infidels and the polytheists. Oh Allah, break their words, shake their feet, disperse and tear apart their unity and ruin their houses and destroy their homes.

Mysteriously, burning Jews out of their homes “did not meet the threshold of a crime”, according to the Metropolitan Police.

Lucy Connolly was famously awarded 31-months at his Majesty’s pleasure, after tweeting that she didn’t care if all the migrant hotels were burned to the ground. However, if you’re calling for “Death , death to the IDF!” at either the Welsh Parliament or the Glastonbury festival, it appears the authorities simply don’t have enough to go on—and that’s with the evident spike in antisemitism that such events cause.

You might think that the sitting Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, would have something compassionate to say about the Manchester attack. But then, this is a Home Secretary wholly comfortable at Palestine Solidarity rallies, who abstained on the vote to proscribe Palestine Action earlier in the summer. When asked about the pro-Palestine protests taking place in the wake of the Manchester attack, the best Mahmood could muster was to say that she was “disappointed,” and that “carrying on in this way does feel un-British.”

Starmer naturally does not bear responsibility for this alone. It was Tony Blair after all, who crowbarred the borders open, and successive Conservative governments which failed to get to grips with Britain’s increasingly restive Muslim population. Starmer however, did make the ultimate and fatal concession. Coming into office, the PM was clearly troubled by the issue of Gaza. On the one hand, he professed Israel’s right to defend itself. On the other, he is nowhere near foolish enough to underestimate the importance of the Muslim vote to Labour; nor miscalculate which group would react more harshly to the absence of his backing. And so, he aligned himself with Islam.

While never formally stated, Starmer gave the clearest indication of this when he decided to ‘recognise’ the State of Palestine. Diplomatically, this can surely be seen as little more than the legitimisation of terrorism; a mistake European allies have been only too desperate to make.

In such a climate, is it any wonder levels of antisemitism are currently at a record high; one in five ‘Brits’ are now antisemitic; and 44% of British Muslims endorse antisemitic tropes.

At the beginning of the year, it was reported that most British Jews do not believe they have a long-term future in the UK. The minority that did, have probably just had their minds changed forever. Manchester may have been a wake-up call for some, but the writing has been on the wall for some time. Thanks to a craven Prime Minister, Britain is to all intents and purposes under the control of Muslim extremists; extremists who now know their actions are beyond reproach.

This article (Starmer Chose Islam Over Britain and Now We See the Consequences) was created and published by European Conservative and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Frank Haviland