OPINION — In 2017 an Islamic suicide bomber detonated at a pop live performance in Manchester, killing 22 individuals and injuring over a thousand others.
Now one other terrorist has struck the identical metropolis, this time focusing on a synagogue on essentially the most solemn of Jewish holy days, Yom Kippur. Two individuals have been murdered and others are reported to be severely injured. Police responded rapidly to the incident. They killed the terrorist, who gave the impression to be carrying a suicide belt, inside ten minutes of the incident beginning.
Political leaders of all events have denounced the terrorist act. Prime Minister Keir Starmer minimize brief a go to to Copenhagen in order that he may get again to Britain and chair a gathering of the cross-government emergency committee, COBRA, earlier this afternoon.
Intensive police investigations have been launched. Who dedicated the assault? Jews have discovered to concern assaults from all corners, excessive left, excessive proper, excessive Islam. Manchester police mentioned they imagine the attacker is a British citizen of Syrian descent. Was anybody else concerned? We collect that three arrests have been made, however how they have been related with the assault, whether or not there was a plot, coaching, funding, we have no idea. It is crucial to not bounce to conclusions earlier than extra is understood. My hunch, for what it’s value, is that the assault was not effectively deliberate or coordinated and the terrorist may have been appearing alone. However we’ll see.
Disturbing questions are already being requested, nevertheless, together with about British counter-terrorism coverage. A central a part of that coverage has been counter-radicalisation, making an attempt to supply an alternative choice to the “single narrative” of Muslim oppression, which underpinned Islamic extremism within the early days of Al Qaida and ISIS, and to conspiracy theories of utmost proper and left. However has counter-radicalisation been profitable? Some surveys of Islamic attitudes to Jews right here have produced disturbing outcomes. The British Jewish neighborhood, as elsewhere in Western Europe and North America, has seen an upsurge of violence since 7 October 2023 – not all of it Islamic: on-line assaults, excrement smeared on synagogues, bodily assaults on Jewish individuals and buildings. Most Jews really feel much less assured right here than they felt two years in the past, much less glad to be identifiably Jewish in public.
Prime Minister Starmer has promised extra police safety for the Jewish neighborhood. “We are going to do every thing to maintain our Jewish neighborhood secure”, he mentioned at this time. High quality besides that anti-semites right here – Islamic, far proper, far left – know that that’s unsustainable. Jews don’t wish to worship or go to highschool behind barbed wire with armed police not far away. Chillingly, two non-political Jewish entertainers have been prevented from showing on the Edinburgh competition this summer season due to “considerations over employees security”. Whereas some protecting measures are appreciated, they characterize a useless finish for the Jewish neighborhood. Who desires this type of life?
The one long-term hope is that attitudes in the direction of Judaism will change. 2000 years of anti-semitism aren’t going to be eradicated by a authorities initiative. However a bolder and sustained push in opposition to anti-semitism needs to be seen not as a luxurious. It’s wanted as integral to a profitable, holistic counter-terrorism technique. Terrorism can’t be defeated so long as the ideologies behind it are unchallenged.
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