Not In My Name

This man, Jihad al-Shamie, who was a British citizen of Syrian descent, attacked worshippers gathered outside the Heaton Park Synagogue in Manchester. He first rammed them with his car, then stabbed them with a knife, before police officers shot him dead. Two members of the congregation were killed. One of the victims is shown here – Melvin Cravitz, who was 66, and described by his family as a “kind and caring man” – with several others injured, some seriously.

This was the first terror attack against Jews on British soil since the 1990s, when there was an attack on the Israeli embassy in London. Many think that is surprising, particularly since Israel’s invasion of Gaza following the October 7th attacks by Hamas in 2023, and the growing sense of insecurity felt by British Jews as a result of Israel’s actions against Palestinians.

If we look hard enough, we will find hate in the UK. Terrorism and attacks on members of the public here on British soil are not new. I and many of your teachers grew up in the era of Irish Republican terrorist attacks of the 1980s and 1990s, most conducted by the IRA. They favoured bombs planted in heavily populated urban areas and were known for giving a 30 minute warning phone call in advance of detonating said bombs to minimise collateral civilian casualties. However, attacks such as the one in Warrington, near Manchester in 1993, marked an escalation in their intent to cause death and destruction.

In the Warrington attack, two bombs exploded in litter bins in a shopping precinct killing a three-year-old boy and injuring 55 people. The second bomb occurred within a minute of the first, directly in the path of many of those fleeing from the initial blast. A 12-year-old boy became the second fatality when he died in hospital from his injuries several days later. A warning had been telephoned to a Samaritans branch in Liverpool 30 minutes before the detonation, but hadn’t specified Warrington as the target.

Since 2017, there have been 17 incidents (not including last Thursday’s) in the UK classed as acts of terrorism – 13 are linked with Islamic extremism whilst the other 4 are linked to right wing, white supremacist ideologies. They are a sad result of the radicalisation of members of our society by those hell-bent on creating division, fear and opposition of others. We must all be cognisant of the dangers those who seek to radicalise others pose to us all – particularly online, and that is something that young people are particularly vulnerable to.

You may have come across the term ‘Antisemitism’, defined as hostile actions or discrimination against Jews. It is often known as the world’s oldest hatred. Pre-Christian anti-Judaism existed in Rome and Ancient Greece and has existed in various forms ever since, culminating in the racial antisemitism of Nazism and the Holocaust between 1941 and 1945. It is the actions of those antisemites that has driven the creation of a sense of Jewishness that has an aura of distrust, suspicion, paranoia or ‘otherness’ – all of which underpins conspiracy theories about Zionist world domination and hate-based nationalism. However, like all religious and ethnic groups, there is no such entity; Jews are not a wholly unified and cohesive group – there are atheist Jews, Buddhist Jews and even Pagan Jews, the same way that there is no one ‘type’ of Christian.

This cartoon conveys the sense felt by so many Jews, and Muslims, that the actions of their governments, or associated organisations or individuals, are not done so “in their name”. Many Jewish people are, in fact, pro-Palestinian, and pro-peace, in their views; Jews and Muslims have lived side by side, in peace and harmony, in many places, for a long time. In Manchester, Jewish communities have existed in areas like Cheetham since the late 19th century and in more recent times, Jewish and Muslim communities have formed a cohesive community there – this is contrary to press coverage, which often portrays two communities at war. This is so often not the case.

The irony of the situation we find ourselves in is this: when Muslims, or those who say they are acting on behalf of all Muslims against Jews, or other groups, go on indiscriminate, anti-Jewish rampages, even the most liberal of Jews are inclined to be less vociferous in their support of Palestinian rights and dignity. They alienate the most valuable supporters they could have – those Jews who do not support the total eradication and bulldozing of Palestinian areas across the land of Israel without regard to internationally recognised legal norms.

Rationality, peace, justice and compassion have all been lost in the current hate-filled sense of hysteria, and humanity is ultimately the loser.

And who to turn to for the final word this morning? Shakespeare, of course, who describes hatred and rage by arbitrary association perfectly in Julius Caesar. In this scene, a poet named Cinna is attacked and killed by a mob of Roman citizens. Although Cinna tries to clarify that he is a poet and not the conspirator Cinna (who played a key role in the assassination of Caesar), the enraged crowd insists on killing him for his “bad verses” and because of his name.

The mob is depicted as a powerful, easily manipulated, and irrational force, driven by rage and superstition rather than reason. Not all Cinnas are murderers in the same way that not all Jews hate Palestinians and not all Muslims hate Jews – and there is something we ought to take from that.

Christian San Jose MA (Oxon)

Headmaster