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

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.]

---

All my posts are freely accessible, but my journalism is possible only because of the support of readers. If you liked this article or any of the others, please consider sharing it with friends and making a donation to support my work. You can do so by becoming a paid Substack subscriber, or donate via Paypal or my bank account, or alternatively set up a monthly direct debit mandate with GoCardless. A complete archive of my writings is available on my website. I’m on Twitter and Facebook.