The scene at Heaton Synagogue following the suspected Jihad attack on Jewish worshipers on Yom Kippur.
By now, at the close of Yom Kippur in the United Kingdom, many of my readers will be aware of the terrible vehicular and stabbing attack that has taken place at the Heaton Synagogue in Manchester in North West England. Two innocent people have been murdered with four others seriously wounded and who are currently in hospital. The attacker who is pictured below, has been shot dead by police who appeared to believe that this attacker had on him an explosive device.
I’m increasingly unwilling these days to attribute motives for attacks too early, as it’s so easy to be wrong. But based on the appearance of the attacker, the nature of the attack using a vehicle and knives and the physical appearance of the attacker, who came complete with a very Islamic style beard along with reports that the attacker shouted the Islamic war cry of ‘Allah Hu Akbar’ during the attack, it’s difficult to dismiss suggestions that this is an Islamic attack on Britain’s Jews. Reports from Germany stating that a large number of Islamic extremists were arrested in the run up to Yom Kippur following intelligence that there were to be Islamic attacks on Germany’s synagogues, also strengthen the rumours about the Manchester attack being Islam-linked in some way. With all that has been released so far about this attack and this attacker I have to say that although it is not impossible for this to have been a far rightist attack it’s unlikely bordering on improbable that it is such bearing in mind the photograph of the attacker and some of the other information that has come out about his actions.
Before I carry on with this piece I wish to mourn the innocent people who this savage murdered. On a day when many of us remember our dead as part of the Yizkor service on Yom Kippur, two people have been murdered by this savage and for no other reason than that they were Jewish. May their memories be for a blessing and may Hashem avenge the blood of these martyrs.
The reporting of this terrible tragedy by the mainstream media has been at times very poor. The BBC sat on aspects of this story that were flying around the X platform for ages before the BBC saw fit to ‘verify’ them. Sky News have also not only mistakenly called the synagogue a mosque in several reports but are also pushing the ‘mental health crisis’ line with regards to the now thankfully deceased attacker. Strange isn’t it that some MSM outlets seem so willing and ready to reach for a ‘mental health’ explanation when it comes to attacks that are perceived to be Islam-related but who might be reluctant to do so if the assailant might be from the far right? However for the sake of balance the BBC did at least feature this story quite early on and have given the public a running commentary on the incident and didn’t try to hide it or engage in too much editorialisation in the news reports about what happened, which for the BBC makes a bit of a change.
From what I can gather from the various news reports and from different X feeds what happened was that the murderous savage aimed a vehicle at people outside the synagogue where the early morning Yom Kippur service was happening. The savage then stabbed various people and was seen stabbing his knife at the windows of the synagogue. It appears that the police shot the savage when it appeared to them that the savage was reaching for some sort of detonation device. There’s video out there that shows the police trying to push bystanders back once they realised that the savage was carrying an item that was likely to be an improvised explosive device. Later on witnesses reported hearing a loud explosion which is more than likely the Bomb Squad safely detonating the device that the savage was believed to be carrying. Following an examination of the device it was ascertained by the Bomb Squad and Greater Manchester Police that the IED was ‘not viable’ however the police officer who shot this savage dead was not to have known that and the officer had to proceed on the reasonable assumption that this savage was about to set off a bomb.
There have been reports that the Special Air Service (SAS) arrived at the scene by helicopter but as you can expect there’s not much in the way of confirmation of this from the Ministry of Defence due to the nature of the SAS and their operations, much of what the SAS do is secret for damned good reasons. There have also been reports from the BBC of arrests in Manchester of those that may be connected to this attack but Greater Manchester Police have not confirmed these reports. On this matter the BBC said in an initial report on arrests:
A witness says he saw two men in handcuffs on a residential street being led away by police.
The man, who did not want to be identified, lives on White House Avenue - close to the Heaton Park Synagogue - which he says is usually "very quiet".
He told the PA news agency: "They’ve arrested two people on our road." He added that he did not know the men.
"They’ve closed the road and there’s a police helicopter just over us. There were six or seven police cars with armed police," he added.
Greater Manchester Police has not confirmed any arrests linked to the incident. We'll continue to monitor updates from them.
It may well be the case that these arrests are not linked to this attack or they may be arrests for peripheral matters maybe an Islamist comment about the attack or that those arrested might have been associated with the attacker but may be otherwise innocent. At this point we do not know and we will not find out until the police have finished with their inquiries regarding these two men. Later information from Greater Manchester Police stated that there were two further arrests but again no real detail at this time. Whether these are in addition to the earlier reported arrests is not clear at the moment.
One thing I will say however is that this might not be some sort of lone wolf style attack. If the attacker did have explosives then he’s more than likely going to have had some sort of support network, if only to assist him with the explosives or Islamic spiritual support. I say this because many of the other mass casualty Islamic attacks that have occurred in the UK such as the 7/7, London Bridge I and the Manchester Arena attacks were multi-participant attacks. Other attacks such as the Westminster attack and the London Bridge II attacks were lone self radicalised individuals. This could be an either or situation it could be a lone wolf Islamist or it could be that this man is part of a network, as time goes by I’m sure that more information will come out about this attacker.
Many synagogues in Britain went into total lockdown following this incident. As I could not physically get to a synagogue today due to geographic and other constraints, I took part in an online morning service for Yom Kippur and this synagogue (which I will not name for security reasons) was no exception with regards to beefing up security. Usually this particular synagogue has a break on Yom Kippur where kids and parents could go and play in the local public playground but not today. All movements into and out of the synagogue have been strictly limited with parents and children especially ordered to either stay in the synagogue or go home. The instruction was that there was to be nobody going in or out as they usually would. This is a sensible precaution in a town where there has already been jihadist activity and concerns about salafist thought and salafist literature being present in some of the local mosques. I’ve also heard reports, at this point unconfirmed, that security has been upped in many other British synagogues with a heavy police presence being reported at some Jewish places of worship.
Although I am a critic of some of the actions of Britain’s police forces with regards their zealotry in dealing with nonsense ‘speech crimes’, on this occasion I must praise Greater Manchester Police for their swiftness and professionalism in dealing with this murderous savage. Greater Manchester Police, who have declared the synagogue murders as an act of terrorism, neutralised the terrorist as soon as they could and as soon as they suspected that the savage was in possession of a bomb. Greater Manchester Police have also handled this incident and the information distribution surrounding it far better than the police handled the aftermath of the Southport Atrocity. The police have been upfront about this being a terror attack and have not equivocated nor hidden behind legal restrictions which is what they did following the Southport Atrocity, however at the time of writing GMP have still not released the name of the murderous savage who carried out this attack but hopefully it should come out soon.
It’s highly likely that this attack, which may be the worst Jihadist attack on Jews in Britain in recent recorded history, is not in my view going to be a one off. It’s quite possible that this is just the first of these types of jihad attacks on Jews and it may not be long before Britain ends up like France, a nation that has a massive jihad problem, with armed police outside every synagogue to deter Islamist attacks. Jews and their allies in Britain will now have to have the sort of security mindset that Jews and allies have to have in places like France which has been so onerous that French Jews, who have had a presence in France since Roman times, have decided to give up on France and make aliyah to Israel.
The response to this attack by mainstream (and not so mainstream ones) politicians and commentators has been utterly vomit inducing. Since the attack there’s been a constant parade of weapons grade hypocritical political scumbags, including the likes of Richard Burgon, Zarah Sultana, Jeremy Corbyn, Sadiq Khan the Greater London Mayor and the ‘jihad alliance’ of ‘Gaza Independent’ MP’s, wringing their hands over this attack. The horrific Leftist Rivka Brown, she of the infamous social media post that praised Hamas’s invasion of Israel on 7th October 2023 also popped up with hypocritical hand-wringing over this attack. All these politicians, media types and far leftist nutters have trotted out their ‘thoughts and prayers’ bullshit despite spending nearly all the time since the October 7th Pogrom in Israel slagging off the Jewish State or taking part in or facilitating pro-Hamas hate marches. By their hate filled rants about Zionists and about Jews since October 7th they have in my view contributed greatly to the increasingly unsafe position of Jews in the UK.
It’s pretty obvious that the government is going to swiftly move into public opinion management mode following this attack. We are probably going to get the ‘don’t look back in anger’ nonsense that we saw after the Manchester Arena Attack. We are also going to get moderate Muslims paraded in front of the media to tell us all again the great lie that terrorism has ‘nothing to do with Islam’, as we saw after the London Bridge I attack. I dare say that on this occasion we will also probably get the Jewish Left and those on the wilder shores of Progressive Judaism doing the ‘thoughts and prayers’ stuff and doing their bit, either knowledgeably or inadvertently, to deflect attention away from what is increasingly likely to be the jihadist motivation for this savage’s attack. I suggest that we should ignore the ‘don’t look back in anger’ nonsense and those progressive Rabbonim who still insist, despite ample evidence to the contrary, that we can live in peace with those who are fully dedicated to murdering Jews.
Of course and I feel that I have to say this, it’s a case of ‘not all Moslems’ who want to murder Jews or anyone else for that matter. There are going to be many Moslems who are just as horrified by this attack as anybody else. But we should not shy away from acknowledging that there is a significant number of Moslems in Britain who harbour murderous intent towards British Jews and they do so because of Islamic theology.
What has happened in Manchester is what many British Jews feared would happen. We feared that sooner or later a jihadist or jihadists, emboldened by the constant pro-Hamas hate marches and the permissive view taken of such marches by police and politicians, would commit an atrocity like the one we have seen in Manchester. Britain and those who run this nation and those who police it have allowed and turned a blind eye to Leftist and Islamist Jew hatred and because they’ve done this it was only a matter of time before some jihadist or some equally deranged Leftist commuted a terrorist attack like this.
This attack in Manchester is evidence that we’ve reached a dreadful point in the UK. It’s a dreadful point for British Jews first of all but it should be seen as dreadful for all Britons. Britain used to be a safe-ish place for Jews, it was a safe place for my wife’s family who came here when France fell to the Germans in 1940, but because of a failure by successive governments to get to grips with Islamic extremism in any meaningful way, Britain is no longer the safe place for Jews it once was. The worsening security situation for Jews in Britain was already behind a big increase in the number of Jews moving from Britain to Israel (when Israel a country at war looks better than Britain then it’s clear we have a problem here) and I suspect that this attack will make more British Jews ask themselves the question ‘should I stay, or should I go’?
Baruch Dayan Ha Emet for the innocent lives taken today. I say again may the memory of those lost be for a blessing and may the Eternal One avenge the blood of these martyrs as only He can. We must not be cowed by evil, we must stand up against it and fight it