While Jews in Manchester, England, were murdered on the holiest day of the calendar, Yom Kippur, a scion of one of the most notable Syrian Jewish families was leading a special prayer group in Damascus and getting ready to run in parliamentary elections. Indeed, this year and the last six months have seen a dozen or so visits from both Syrian and Ashkenazi Jews from the United States; the first Tel Aviv to Damascus flight in 50 years; and The Times of Israel editor’s official visit to meet senior Syrian officials and civil society.
Meanwhile, preceding the terrorist attack in Manchester, Jews and Israelis have been made to feel unwelcome in the United Kingdom as every day passes. It’s not just the threat of arrest to senior Israeli officials, but an unprecedented hostility to ordinary Jews, whether in their daily lives, such as visiting the hospitals, to the government-funded BBC’s open bias against British Jews. It is a remarkable turnaround these days to say that in large part, Damascus has become a more hospitable place than modern Britain and its major cities, including London, Birmingham and Manchester.
To me, it has come as no surprise, as the United Kingdom, starting from the 1990s, has not just flirted with radical political Islam but actively backed groups considered as terrorists in much of the Muslim world. Aside from giving a platform to the Muslim Brotherhood to cause havoc across the Arab world, the United Kingdom has been a host to groups banned in North Africa, as well as in South, Central and East Asia. The United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, among other moderate Sunni states, have continuously blamed the United Kingdom not just for hosting, but at times supporting, political Islamist groups that are declared as terrorists and hostile to their security. All these groups have ideological and logistical links with Hamas.
The Syrian-born attacker of the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation in Manchester on Oct. 2, along with his father, was known to have pro-Hamas and Islamist sympathies, as has been made clear by their social-media posts. Jihad al-Shamie, 35, even praised the worst terrorist groups that were causing carnage in Syria during the 14-year civil war. While British police deny that he was on any watch list, it is unthinkable that they did not know of his tendencies, given his arrest for rape a year ago. This synagogue attack and his online extremist posts would be enough evidence to put someone on a watch list.
Similarly, the United Kingdom’s first-ever suicide bombing—after an Ariana Grande concert on May 22, 2017, also in Manchester—had shown that not only was the bomber’s family known to security services, but that they were fighting in Libya alongside the same Islamist groups that British intelligence were supporting against former Libyan ruler Moammar Gaddafi. The families of the Manchester Arena bombing sued the security services, though the state did not allow the trial to go ahead and instead simply offered an apology.
A prominent analyst of British foreign policy has written an entire book on how U.K. security services not just supported individuals like those who bombed Manchester but also covered up those links. An in-depth investigation by the Daily Mail also found deliberate support between Islamists and British security services. These same Islamists have been openly preaching anti-Jewish vitriol in the United Kingdom for more than a decade.
The direct upward trajectory of antisemitism in the United Kingdom can be traced to the Western country’s open support for various Islamist groups that led to terrorism in Libya, Tunisia, Syria and Jordan. Aside of the political Islamist groups active in the United Kingdom, universities, schools and even Parliament started hosting members that openly confessed antisemitic views, which political parties tolerated for too long. Everyone is aware of former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and the direction he took the party; still, the Conservative Party was also no stranger to high-profile outbursts against British Jewry.
The National Health Service has openly tolerated and hosted doctors who have posted antisemitic views, as well as threatened Jews and Israel. Remarkably, in an open admission to this failure, the U.K. health minister recently announced that they had indeed failed to support their Jewish citizens, including letting them down in hospitals, and a failure to protect them from hate. Similarly, antisemitism was at an all-time high even before the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, as a report found out in 2022.
Perhaps the worst element of tolerance or indifference has been podcasters and magazines that have operated from the biggest cities and that openly indulge in conspiracy theories, blaming Jews for everything and the ills of the Middle East. Most of these Muslim podcasters and authors are linked to the same political Islamist groups that have been active in the Middle East, with direct links to Hamas.
A warning from The Jewish Chronicle a few years ago found evidence that foreign and British YouTube channels were not being banned, despite openly spreading anti-Jewish conspiracy theories. London has also turned a blind eye to leading Pakistani politicians who have openly spread hate against Jews, as they are still being hosted by British government officials and giving their families political asylum. Similarly, former cabinet minister Zac Goldsmith was taunted by a Pakistani defense minister whose family resides in London.
While officials simultaneously supported Islamist groups from the United Kingdom to proliferate in the Middle East, they also ignored antisemitism by these groups and their allies at home.
For years, British Jews have been saying that the level of hatred and open incitement in schools, hospitals and the media would eventually lead to violence. Yet the government ignored these precautions; indeed, all the while it was supporting groups and political figures that have direct links and open support to Hamas. These individuals and entities have directly and indirectly spawned an echo chamber that led to the murder of Jews during Yom Kippur.
It is a strange twist of fate that as Damascus welcomes global Jewry, the United Kingdom welcomed a Syrian-born Islamist who should have been arrested and put away years ago.
