This was a terrorist attack that Jews in Britain dreaded.
Jews, representing less than one percent of Britain’s population, feared that an antisemitic lunatic would launch a murderous rampage aimed at their 280,000-strong community.
On October 2, on the morning of Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, their worst fears materialized when a 35-year-old British citizen of Syrian descent, Jihad al-Shamie, rammed his vehicle into a crowd outside Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue in Manchester, a city with 25,000 to 30,000 Jewish residents.
Leaving his car, he began stabbing people before he was fatally shot by police, who arrived on the scene just minutes after he had begun his assault.
Two Jews, identified as Adrian Daulby, 53, and Melvin Cravitz, 66, both members of the shul, were killed. Daulby was accidentally killed by police officers as they fired toward Shamie.
Three other congregants remain in hospital in serious condition.
The attack took place six years after a neo-Nazi attempted to murder Jewish worshippers in a synagogue in Halle, Germany, on Yom Kippur. It was thwarted, and the perpetrator was sentenced to life in prison.
Shamie, a Muslim in a country where Muslims account for six percent of the population, arrived in Britain with his family in 2006. Police believe he may have been under the influence of jihadist ideology. He was under investigation for rape and had been released on bail.
Shamie’s father, Faraj, a physician, condemned his son’s attack. Yet after Hamas’ invasion of southern Israel on October 7, 2023, he praised the onslaught and called for Israel’s destruction.
Shamie’s rampage, the worst antisemitic crime in Britain since the medieval era, was a nightmare come true.
The Board of Deputies of British Jews, the national organization that represents Jewish communities, described it as “sadly something we feared was coming.”
“Our hearts are shattered,” Britain’s chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, said in describing the ripples of shock and horror. “What transpired was an awful blow to us, something which actually we were fearing might happen because of the buildup to this action.”
He pointed to recent demonstrations by Palestine Action, a banned group, and regular pro-Palestinian marches condemning Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip.
Miriam Lorie, a British rabbi in London, wrote, “We’ve known something like this would happen for years. But that didn’t make it less shocking when it happened. After attacks on Jewish shops, schools and synagogues across Europe, it felt like a matter of time before something would come to our shores in the United Kingdom.”
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his Jewish wife, Victoria, visited the shul in Manchester and attended a synagogue service in London in solidarity with the Jewish community.
Vowing to “do everything in my power” to protect Jews in Britain, Starmer, in a piece in the Jewish Chronicle, acknowledged that antisemitism is rising and that Jews face dangers simply because of who they are.
“Peaceful protest is a cornerstone of our democracy,” he wrote, “but a minority have used these protests as a pretext for stoking antisemitic tropes.”
In her first speech since being named as the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Sarah Mullally, said the Church of England has a responsibility to stand with Jews against antisemitism. “Hatred and racism of any kind cannot be allowed to tear us apart,” she said.
The Jewish Chronicle, a Jewish weekly, reported that staff at the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism were “shocked but not surprised” by the events in Manchester.
Antisemitism Policy Trust, a research center, found that public expressions of anti-Jewish hatred have coexisted alongside pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel sentiment since October 7.
More than half of all reported incidents since 2023 have been linked to the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. Only 16 percent of such incidents have been related to Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians.
The Community Security Trust, which protects Jewish communities and documents antisemitic incidents in Britain, recorded 4,296 incidents in 2023, the largest number in a single year. By contrast, 1,684 incidents occurred in 2020, 2,261 in 2021 and 1,662 in 2022.
Research conducted this year found that 35 percent of Jews felt unsafe in Britain, compared with 9 percent prior to 2023.
Perceptions of antisemitism have intensified, with 47 percent of British Jews regarding it as a “very big” problem, up from just 11 percent in 2012.
The Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR) reports that 32 percent of Jews experienced at least one antisemitic incident in 2024.
The JPR, in 2017, published a survey of antisemitic attitudes in Britain, finding that around 2 percent of the population subscribed to “hardcore” antisemitic beliefs and that a further 3 percent held “softer” antisemitic views. JPR also found that at least 30 percent of Britons harbored at least one antisemitic trope.
In the wake of the Manchester attack, Melanie Phillips, a conservative journalist who tracks antisemitism, wrote a scathing column.
“British Jews have been warning about the lethal incitement against them for a long time, but have been totally ignored. Keir Starmer says now he will do everything possible to keep British Jews safe. The fact is he has done nothing to keep British Jews safe. He said hatred against Jews is rising once again and Britain must defeat it once again. But his government and his party have been fuelling it.
“Jews in Britain have been unsafe for years. All synagogues and communal events have long been guarded. Some Jewish schools have been forced to erect barbed wire. But for the past two years since the October 7 massacre in Israel and during the war that has followed in Gaza, Starmer’s government has allowed gross incitement against Jews to run riot unchecked.”
As Phillips might agree, antisemitism is a recurring problem throughout Europe.
A succession of antisemitic attacks have occurred in France.
On the eve of the Manchester attack, German police arrested three suspected members of Hamas in Berlin who, they said, intended to launch attacks against Jewish and Israeli institutions in the country. Two were German citizens of Muslim descent, and the third was an immigrant from Lebanon.
Last February, four Hamas members suspected of plotting violence against Jewish institutions in Europe went on trial in Berlin, marking the first court case against Hamas operatives in Germany.
And in December 2023, seven men were arrested in Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark for allegedly planning terrorist attacks against Jews and Jewish sites.
These incidents, and particularly the attack in Manchester, remind us once again that antisemitism, the world’s longest hatred, occurs and reoccurs in cycles.
It is a malady that refuses to die.