A few minutes ago Rachel Moiselle tweeted this,
Sundown is soon and religious British Jews will be turning on their phones to learn about what happened.
I am so sorry.
*
She was referring to this:
Two Jewish people have died in a car ramming and stabbing attack at a synagogue in Manchester.
The attack came on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish religious calendar, and is being treated by police as a terror incident.
Police say they know the identity of the attacker, who was shot dead by armed officers at the scene.
I, too, wonder what happened, and I’m not just talking about the name of today’s attacker. Britain did not used to be like this.
I have seen many condemnations of this act of terror from prominent Muslims and other supporters of the Palestinian cause. I think most of them are sincere. But they must confront the fact that hatred of Jews has long been commonplace among British Muslims and is now rampant.
From another angle, it has also long been commonplace to mock those who say that their “thoughts and prayers” are with the victims and the bereaved whenever there is a mass murder. I do not share this view. If you pray, please pray for the congregation of Heaton Park synagogue tonight. And whether you pray or not, think about them. Think about what we can do to protect British Jews in a country that they once thought would be a safe haven.
Unlike many, I do not think that censorship of hate speech – note the absence of scare quotes – will help. When I was growing up there was no censorship and nor were there any guards outside synagogues. Let the people who recently chanted “From Manchester to Gaza, globalise the Intifada” be heard. Let them hear themselves.
Alas, Natalie, a lot of what I heard from muslim “community leaders” tended very heavily towards, “We really don’t want a backlash”. I thought that insensitive at the least/
Such things hardly ever happen in places where law-abiding citizens can carry a weapon.
An armed society IS a more polite society.
Ultimately, any society that denies its citizens that right will fall to the people who do not obey the laws.
Yet again the words of Norm MacDonald ring true.
On a more serious note over the past 20 years Jews in England have found it necessary to employ security guards at our places of worship and to organise rotas of parents to protect our children on the way to and from school. We are told by the English police to hide the badges of our faith in public for fear of causing provocation by our mere existence. Muslim men have driven around Jewish areas of North London in broad daylight shouting through a megaphone “Kill the Jews, Rape their women” yet the CPS decided not to prosecute. This deadly attack on our holiest day comes as little surprise.
Starmer has sprung into action and just ordered a couple of million pairs of steel gauntlets so they can continue to sit on their hands without any more discomfort.
Last time there were a terrorist attack in Manchester, the establishment wanted us to ‘not look back in anger.’
I preferred Morrissey’s response to that:
Martin,
Proof a stuck-record sometimes plays the right tune…