When Manchester, England, joined Boulder, Colorado, Washington and other cities in the tragic roll call of anti-Jewish violence on Thursday, British Jews were shocked and saddened by the recognition that antisemitism, already on the rise in their country, had mutated again into something deadlier.
Like other European countries and the United States, Britain has recorded a marked rise in antisemitic incidents in the nearly two years since the attack by Hamas militants on civilians in Israel and the Israeli military campaign in Gaza that followed.
There had been no recent acts of targeted violence at synagogues in Britain, although Jewish people and places of worship have featured in several terrorist plots thwarted by the police over the past decade.
“We haven’t had an incident like this here,” said David Feldman, the co-director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism in London. “This is, in the most literal sense, extraordinary.”
The attack is likely to intensify the debate in Britain over the war in Gaza, which has set off a spike in antisemitism around the world and a global backlash against Israel.
The news that a man had rammed his vehicle and stabbed worshipers outside the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation was deeply jarring, recalling the attack in Boulder in June on a rally for hostages held by Hamas, and the fatal shooting of two staff members of the Israeli Embassy in Washington two months later.
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The post For Britain’s Jews, a New and Deadly Sign of Rising Antisemitism appeared first on New York Times.
