UK SYNAGOGUE ATTACK WAS BLUNTED BY JEWISH GUILT

The attacker about to be slotted by an unusually speedy and responsive police force

by Colin Liddell

The synagogue attack in the UK could have been a lot worse than it was. But the simple fact is that the synagogue expected to be attacked and was taking a lot of extra precautions. These included security guards, who played a key role, and an extra-fast response by armed police, which clearly was according to a pre-existing arrangement with the police. 

Here is the BBC explaining how this worked out:

Police responded to reports of a car driving towards members of the public and a man stabbed at Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue at 09:31 BST on Thursday. Officers declared a major incident and arrived at the scene in north Manchester within seven minutes, shooting dead the suspect at 09:38. A large number of people were worshipping at the synagogue at the time, and were held inside while the surrounding area was made safe.

Seven minutes! That's a blooming Olympic record for serious crime in the UK! In fact, the police must have been parked round the corner in a panda car.

Also, the attacker was confronted by the synagogue's own intensive security arrangements and reinforced building:

"Worshippers and security staff demonstrated "immediate bravery" and helped stop the attacker from entering the building, Greater Manchester Police said. In an update on Friday evening, police said witnesses had described seeing a man "acting suspiciously" outside the synagogue before the attack, who then walked away after being confronted by security. The police said it do not believe that incident was reported to them, but about 15 minutes later "the individual returned in a vehicle and began his horrific attack" .... 

...another eyewitness who was driving his delivery van near the scene, told the BBC he saw a man "bleeding out on the floor".

"Then as we looked over the guy had a knife and he was just stabbing the window, trying to get in [the building]," he said.

Inside the synagogue, Rabbi Daniel Walker described running into the foyer and seeing "a terrorist trying to batter his way into the synagogue".

He told the BBC the attacker was "body-charging the doors, throwing heavy plant pots at the doors, doing everything he could to get in", as he and others held the entrance doors shut.

But the Jews at the synagogue were not just disconnected adherents of a religion that has a tentative link with a country that is engaged in genocide. In fact, it could be claimed that they were actively engaged in "hate washing" Israel's genocide against the Palestinians by pushing the "blood libel" that people just irrationally hate Jews.

Grok:

"There is no evidence that the Holy Law Synagogue in Manchester, England—an Orthodox Jewish congregation—has issued any statements denouncing or criticizing Israel's military actions in Gaza. As an Orthodox synagogue, it aligns with traditional Jewish support for Israel, and broader community responses in Manchester, including from the Jewish Representative Council of Greater Manchester, have instead condemned rising antisemitism linked to the Israel-Hamas war while expressing solidarity with Israel." 

While irrational hatred of Israel and wider Jewry is definitely a thing, and something I have denounced and ridiculed in the past at great length, there are also legitimate reasons to hate Israel and distrust the wider Jewish community, based on Israel's actions and the way it tries to weaponize the Jewish diaspora to promote its geopolitical goals in states like the US and Britain, often to the detriment of those countries.

But these malicious actions are not guiltless. Those doing them and supporting them know that they are "wrong" on some level, or at least likely to provoke an extremely negative reaction. They also know that these negative reactions can themselves be weaponized as "evidence" that Jews are "innocent" victims, something else very tempting but which may provoke a few extra qualms of guilt.  

However, truly innocent victims don't expect to be attacked and therefore seldom take the kind of extensive precautions that proved generally effective in limiting the carnage of this particular attack.

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Colin Liddell is the Chief Editor of Neokrat and the author of Interviews & Obituaries, a collection of encounters with the dead and the famous. Support his work by buying his book here (USA), here (UK), and here (Australia), or by taking out a paid subscription on his Substack.

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