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Manchester police synagogue attack

Manchester synagogue attack exposes hypocrisy of the British establishment

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The British establishment has leapt at the opportunity to exploit last week’s synagogue attack to further their own interests, and demonise the Palestine movement. Their hypocrisy and cynicism knows no bounds. Now is not the time to back down, but to fight back.

Last Thursday, on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur, a British-Syrian man carried out a knife attack at a synagogue in Manchester, killing one and injuring two. The attacker, Jihad Al-Shamie, was shot dead by police on the scene.

The facts concerning this attack have been reported elsewhere – in great detail. In fact, the British media has pumped out little else but wall-to-wall coverage of this event and its aftermath over the weekend.

In passing, one detail that has been glossed over, for obvious reasons, is the fact that the Greater Manchester Police later quietly admitted responsibility for shooting dead one bystander and injuring another. But that is by the by.

What is most striking about this event, however, is the fact that the Starmer government, the billionaire-owned media, Israel’s rabid Zionist supporters, and the rest of the imperialist establishment have all leapt at the opportunity to exploit this attack for their own ends.

Within hours, schools and NHS trusts across Manchester were placed on lockdown. Armed police were deployed across the country – and even across the Atlantic in New York City. Starmer, meanwhile, rushed back to London from Copenhagen to attend an emergency Cobra meeting.

The scale of the response was unprecedented. This created a ripple of fear and panic, whipping-up public opinion into a frenzy, and instilling the idea that Britain is awash with antisemitic hate and violence.

Hysterical response

Predictably, right wingers and Zionists were given free rein across the media to link this attack with the Palestine movement, and to link anti-Zionism with antisemitism. This is despite the fact that no clear motive has yet been discovered for the attack.

From the BBC to the Telegraph – all of the establishment mouthpieces have joined this chorus of denunciation.

The Telegraph quoted the head of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Phil Rosenberg, who accused Palestine protestors of antisemitism, and “almost gloating over [the] Yom Kippur attack”.

This is a blatant, sickening lie; a slap in the face to the millions of people in Britain – including thousands of anti-Zionist Jews – who oppose Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and the bloody role of ‘our’ imperialist government.

This hysterical campaign to demonise the Palestine movement was summarised most clearly by the rabid, right-wing Jewish Chronicle, which falsely claims to speak in the name of all British Jews:

“For two years, Britain’s Jews have watched thousands march through our streets, with calls to “globalise the intifada” and chanting “from the river to the sea” – slogans of violence directed at Jews, everywhere. On Thursday, we saw it again. The very day people were murdered in our country, simply for being Jewish…

“The last two years were a build up to Thursday’s attack. An attack not just on British Jews. But an assault on Britain itself – on all of our values…

“Those who call for violence against Jews [by which, let us remember, the author includes everyone who has ever chanted “from the river to the sea”] wherever and whenever should be arrested and face the full force of the law.”

Such insane, vengeful rhetoric would be laughable… were the Labour government not taking this advice rather seriously.

Clampdown on Palestine movement

Keen to flex her newfound powers as home secretary, and prove her loyalty to the ruling class, Labour’s Shabana Mahmood wasted no time in utilising this attack to beef up the powers of the state.

“Protest is a fundamental right”, she outrageously reassures us. In the next sentence, however, she qualifies this ‘fundamental right’ by sternly warning that “this right must not be used to intimidate or spread fear amongst communities”.

The police have now been granted powers to legally restrict “repeat protests” which cause “cumulative disruption”, to ban certain protests altogether, and to arrest anyone who breaches these restrictions.

This is clearly aimed at the Palestine movement. But that does not mean that the state will stop itself from wielding these new powers against other social movements. After all, what is a strike if not a disruptive, repeat protest?

For years now, successive governments – both Tory and Labour – have passed legislation to restrict the right to protest and strengthen the state: the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, the Minimum Service Levels Act, etc. This latest move is part of this unmistakable pattern.

Clearly, the ruling class can sense that class anger is brewing under the surface, threatening social explosions and unrest. Why else would they feel the need to extend their powers?

Already, as if the mass arrests of Palestine Action protestors was not enough, the establishment is exerting pressure upon the leadership of the Palestine movement to cancel and rearrange pre-planned demonstrations.

Shabana Mahmood said she was “disappointed” that pro-Palestine protests went ahead over the weekend, labelling them “un-British” and “wrong”.

At the University of Sheffield, meanwhile, Revolutionary Communist Party activists have been asked by the student union bureaucracy to cancel a Palestine rally they have organised, under pressure from the Union of Jewish Students.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews has attacked student Palestine solidarity demonstrations as “hate-filled protests” and has spoken of the need to “drive out anti-Jewish incitement at all levels of our society, including from our universities”.

Hypocrisy and double standards

If our readers require further evidence that this attack has been cynically utilised by the establishment to demonise and clamp down upon the Palestine movement, just look at how the response to the synagogue attack compares to an arson attack on a mosque which took place over the weekend in Peacehaven, East Sussex.

This attack barely even made it into the national news cycle. There were no schools and hospitals on lockdown, nor armed police deployed to mosques across the country.

There was no emergency Cobra meeting, nor any hysterical sermonising from our genocidal politicians about how Islamophobia is a threat to society.

There was no pressure to call off pro-Israel demonstrations out of ‘respect’ for Muslim communities.

In fact, bourgeois public opinion barely noted the passing of this event – just like it ignored the stabbing of an imam at a mosque in West London last month, and the countless other hate crimes against Muslims and other oppressed groups week in, week out.

While stoking fears about antisemitism – telling us that the Palestine movement is fuelling hatred, racism, and division in Britain – the establishment gladly whips up Islamophobia and anti-migrant sentiment, in order to distract from the crisis of their system.

Millions of people can see this hypocrisy and double standards. They can see how the British state and its Zionists allies are using Jews as a political football, in order to delegitimise the widespread anti-imperialist anger in society.

We must be clear, if there’s one thing that will reinforce genuine antisemitic prejudices – that Jews control the country, that Jews are a privileged group in society, etc. – it’s exactly this kind of cynical manipulation and double standards from Starmer and the establishment.

It goes without saying that Communists oppose genuine antisemitism, as with all forms of racism and oppression. It is for this very reason that we oppose this disgusting weaponising of antisemitism from both the British ruling class and the Zionist regime in Israel. They are most of all to blame for the rise of hatred and division in society.

Stand firm and fight back

This isn’t the first time we have been here. On the eve of the anniversary of the October 7 attacks, it feels like all of the hysteria and vitriol from two years ago is being whipped up once again to demonise workers and youth who oppose imperialism.

And it’s no coincidence. The ruling class have a reason to be fearful. Across Europe, a militant mass movement is growing against the genocide. The working class have entered the scene, with the Italian workers striking for Gaza, and dock workers carrying out a boycott against Israel.

But things never repeat themselves in exactly the same way. After two years of gaslighting, baiting, and lies, fewer and fewer people believe anything that comes out of the mouths of politicians and journalists – including false accusations of antisemitism.

The moral condemnations and repressive attacks of the British establishment cannot hold back the anger of millions. The flames of class struggle that are burning across Europe will spread across the Channel soon enough.

The leaders of the Palestine movement, and the left as a whole, have a duty to stand firm against this vile smear campaign, to expose the hypocrisy of Labour and the media, and to spread the movement wider and further than before – starting with this Saturday’s national demonstration in London.

Now is not the time to back down. Now is the time to stand up and fight back!

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