Shanah Tovah with a Slice of Jihad

And You Thought “Globalise the Intifada” Was Just a Metaphor

Yom Kippur holds a special resonance for Jews as the holiest day of the year in the Jewish religious calendar, 10 days after Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. For Jews in Israel, and many in the diaspora, that special resonance goes beyond religious importance to existential significance as the day that bears the name of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The joint invasion by Egypt and Syria, launched as a surprise attack on Yom Kippur that year (6th October), was the closest the pan-Arabist dream of wiping the “Zionist entity” from the map seemed, albeit fleetingly. Caught off guard on the religious holiday (and complacent after the totality of the victory in the 1967 Six-Day War), Israeli forces were sent reeling on the defensive initially and suffering heavy losses before rallying to rout the incompetent Egyptian and Syrian militaries, in the process humiliating Anwar Sadat and Hafez al-Assad, respectively, their Soviet backers, and the UN, who only started calling for ceasefire talks after the war turned in Israel’s favour.

Attacking and killing Jews on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is highly symbolic, whether for pan-Arabist anti-Semitism or ethnocentric theological Islamism. Yom Kippur—the Day of Atonement—and Jews are still being murdered to atone for existing as Jews. A timely reminder that the price for Jewish sovereignty is everlasting war and that, while Israel exists, there can be no atonement but death. Paradoxically, for the status-disaffected Arab imperialists and fundamentalist Islamists, only the death of “Zionists” and Israel’s ultimate destruction can redeem them in the eyes of their Prophet; redemption of the lands consecrated under his banner, in which “The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: O’ Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him!”

Jihad Al-Shamie didn’t find Jews behind a rock or a tree, but at a synagogue in Manchester. On Yom Kippur, of course. No atonement for Jews. The Jews were not hiding, either, but they do require the Community Security Trust for protection. Since October 7th 2023, Jews have been under siege in Britain, a country more interested in protecting inanimate Islamic texts from a match than living Jews from physical violence; physical violence normalised by two years of psychotic, unhinged, Jew-hate vitriol spewed across everywhere from Glastonbury to London, from universities to BlueAnon. As usual, as it has since the days of the Marxist Left, the anti-Semitic invective has been most enthusiastically broadcast by the myriad Useless Idiots of the Western “Progressive” Left, the pseudo-radical Tankie academic “anti-Zionists” and their cabal of indoctrinated campus “decolonisation” clowns. If these automatons spent half their time decolonising their minds from brainrot as they do chanting “There is only one solution: Intifada revolution!”, the incongruence of leaping from “words are violence” to “we love dead Jews” might dawn on them. And yet, incongruence doesn’t even begin to describe the unholy alliance between Rainbow and Crescent. Interesting wording, isn’t it: “only one solution”. Feel like Jews have heard something similar before. Endlösung. The Revolution will be Judenfrei.

But Mr Jihad at the synagogue on Yom Kippur was an entirely congruent, predictable development. Britain’s Jews have been warning that something would happen for two years; the cosplaying radicals on the streets of London and Manchester have hardly been subtle in expressing their desires for Jews. Indeed, in a tragically prophetic incident, it was in Manchester in 2021 that Palestinian-flag-branded cars drove around with a megaphone, shouting, “Fuck the Jews…fuck all of them. Fuck their mothers, fuck their daughters, and show your support for Palestine…Rape their daughters…” Of course, we can just apply the liberal postmodern standard to words and meaning to dilute these statements. After all, “Fuck the Jews” could mean so many things to so many people, right? Maybe they weren’t anti-Semitic, just “anti-Zionist”? Very important distinction, you see. And “Rape their daughters”? Well, that really DependsOnTheContext™; rape can be like rape rape, but with Jewish girls, it could also be an act of “anti-colonial armed resistance”. Yes, very important to “contextualise” the words appropriately. And maybe they just reaally didn’t mean any of it? Just words! The Manchester Crown Prosecution Service at least thought so; all charges against the Manchester Jew-Hate Convoy were dropped.

Surely Jihad Al-Shamie, released on bail for rape, was just “a bad apple”, right? And those men in the Manchester Jew-Hate Convoy were, of course, just “a few bad apples”, right? Just like the keffiyeh-clad UCLA students screaming, “beat that fucking Jew”, were just “a few bad apples”. Just like the ~1,700 academics at Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Brown, UC Berkeley, and Oxford, who signed a letter declaring that Hamas’ actions on October 7th must be “contextualised” (ah yes, “context” again), must have been just “a few bad apples”. Just like the hysterical campus cosplaying jihadis at NYU, with signs saying “We Can’t Wait for the Caliphate”, were “a few bad apples”, surely. Just like the light projections proclaiming “Glory to Our Martyrs…Free Palestine from the River to the Sea” at George Washington University were “a few bad apples”. Or the University of Wisconsin students screaming, “we will liberate the land by any means necessary!”, were “a few bad apples”. Presumably, the “Death to Israelis” sign at UC Santa Cruz was the work of “a few bad apples”, too? It’s not as if the ubiquity of “a few bad apples” reflects a sincerely held worldview of deep, malevolent conviction about Jews. Add up how common “a few bad apples” are, and you suddenly find yourself wading in a widespread, rotten, Jew-hating orchard.

Arbeit Macht Kontext.

In the UK, there were 2,019 recorded anti-Semitic incidents in the first six months of 2024; there were 1,521 incidents in the same period in 2025. In 2024, the notable spike in Jew-hate incidents occurred before the start of military offensives in Gaza, just as the lunacy of the American Tankie academic Left was on full display in immediate response to the October 7th pogrom. The Manchester Evening News recently reported the “Sickening extent of anti-Jewish incidents in Greater Manchester” in the first six months of this year. A Jihad Al-Shamie was always lurking in these numbers. And the British liberal commentariat is shocked—shocked!—that such a tragic event occurred. TheyWillNotDivideUs™ has been deployed in earnest. Yet there is something a little warped by the angle of these takes, which seem to gloss over the reality that Jews in the UK have already been divided out and demonised over two years of an environment of excessive tolerance for overt Jew-hate and more covert, ambient anti-Semitism in the media, government, online, and in the streets.

Starmer has proclaimed that the “pro-Palestinian” protests this week should “respect the grief of British Jews.” Does he have any idea who—what—he is speaking to? FYI, Keir, the reason for the grief is the source of their joy. Missed the spontaneous get-together in Liverpool Street Station just a few hours after the Yom Kippur attack to chant “Zionism is a crime” and other mindless chunder? “From the river to the sea…”, one dead Jew at a time. They don’t respect anything, including the Palestinians they fetishise, because the only time they care about Palestinians is when they’re dead, to then leverage against their pathological obsession with “the Zionist entity”. Jews in Britain haven’t been allowed to rest, let alone grieve, for the pogrom on October 7th, an event instantly turned into a celebration in the UK before a single bomb was dropped on Gaza. Remember the October 8th rally by the University of Sussex students’ union to describe the pogrom as “beautiful and inspiring”? Last May, I went to a screening of a documentary on the Nova music festival massacre on October 7th, shown as part of the Seret Film Festival in London. The cinema was attacked and defaced that morning, and for the showing to proceed required a mass of North London’s Jewish community to form a human shield around the cinema to protect it from the “pro-Palestinians” gathered across the street. They weren’t there to pay any respects. Two years too late to call anyone to “respect the grief of British Jews”, don’t ya think, Sir Keir?

The problem with the fomenting of Jew-hate in our streets, on campuses, and online, is that the convenient excuse of blaming the extreme wings of the political spectrum doesn’t wash anymore. The prevalence is more widespread to the Left of centre; strong support for Israel and Jewish self-determination is generally found among Western conservatives and hawkish centre-Right types. And Jew-hate as the exclusive domain of far-Right skinheads in black boots is a comforting myth that has been thoroughly exposed over the past two years as the full extent of the anti-Semitic rot within the Western Left has publicly revealed itself. What has been exposed in our streets and on university campuses over the past two years is the overt symptoms of an obsessive ideology within certain domains of Leftist academic and political theory; a blend of a particular view within Marxism of Jewish identity and Zionism as byproucts of capitalism, and “post-colonial theory”, in which Israel and Zionism are viewed as byproducts of Western colonialism, with violence against the “imperialists” and “colonialists” sacralised and glorified in pseudo-academic jargon. Unlike the explicitly racial/ethnocentric anti-Semitism of the far-Right, Left-wing anti-Semitism merges Soviet tropes such as the “Zionist lobby” as a force of malign power with reconstituted ancient Christian theological motifs cast in modern secular form, notably the “baby-killing” blood libel depiction of the Jews as bloodthirsty warmongers.

And while, yes, most of the utterly batshit Jew-hate vitriol comes from the “Progressive” Tankie Left, the toxic trait Left-of-centre in the West is that your generic milquetoast Guardianista liberal is part of an information ecosystem in which an ambient level of anti-Semitism colours the discourse, and either participates directly or turns a blind eye to the pathology to their left. The milquetoast Guardianista liberal fashions themselves a deep and serious thinker, which is why their entire worldview and constellation of opinions on Israel is formed by the Guardian, the New York Times, and Louis Theroux’s documentary on West Bank settlements. If they’ve feigned objectivity on Israel, it’s by reading revisionist sophists like Ilan Pappé. If the milquetoast Guardianista liberal sees and hears Jew-hate from their left, they’ll excuse and equivocate, making exceptions for Glastonbury crowds of ~85,000 swaying in unison to the music to their ears of “Death, death to the IDF”, because the symbiotic Vylan and crowd didn’t reaaallly mean Jews, you see, and people must be free to “criticise Israel’s policies”, you see. The milquetoast Guardianista liberal is a proud “anti-racist”, except on anti-Semitism. Like a Pavlovian dog trained by Owen Jones, their immediate response to anti-Semitism is to cry, “but Islamophobia tho!”

The milquetoast Guardianista liberal shares one thing in common with the Tankies to their Left, which is that they constitute a political bloc built on substituting slogans for thought. They may not overtly call for “Intifada Revolution”, but they may be inclined to counter claims of anti-Semitism by stating that they’re “anti-Zionist, not anti-Semitic”, as if anti-Jewish collective national identity and the right to live in safety are distinguishable from anti-Jewishness. They are ignorant of the Soviet origins of the “anti-Zionist” trope and the nexus with the Marxist-Leninist desire to eradicate any unique Jewish identity distinguishable from society; the discourse that casts The Good Jew as the assimilated Jew, who doesn’t bother society with their Jewishness. And as if they would state, “I’m not anti-Black, I just don’t want Blacks to have self-determination and safety.” The milquetoast Guardianista liberal is the first to point out that “criticising Israel’s policies is not anti-Semitism”, while being incapable of telling you the first thing about Israeli politics, and ignorant of how “Israel’s policies” has become the Trojan horse for reducing a nation and people to a caricature. “Israel’s policies tho” represents a shift in wider liberal discourse, prominent among liberal journalists and media outlets, that increasingly conflates terms like “Jews”, “Zionism”, and “Israel”, using them interchangeably, in a semantic sleight that reshapes the discourse around the delegitimisation of Israel’s existence.

This background ambient anti-Semitism that underpins the discourse Left-of-centre is much more subtle than that skinheads-on-council-estate image of far-Right racial anti-Semitism; it is found dressed up in pseudo-principled rhetoric by academics, journalists, and in “intellectual” circles. The rhetorical emphasis on “Zionism” provides a conveniently exculpatory term that removes any direct mention of the people in question, while the “Israel’s policies tho” trope is deployed to manufacture collective guilt for “Israel the genocidal state” or “Israel the apartheid state”, as a unilateral indictment where Palestinian (and other belligerents) agency or responsibility is swept under the rug. So “informed”, the milquetoast Guardianista liberal thinks it is unconscionable—unconscionable!—that Israel suddenly just decided to build a security wall—out of nowhere!—around the West Bank: “You see, Israel’s policies! What do you mean, ‘suicide bombers’? That is really Islamophobic of you.” And to their Left, the Tankies spew vitriol about “the Zionist entity” and clamour for the sacralising cleansing violence of “the resistance”. In the blending of discourses, the Western Left, Tankie and milquetoast Guardianista liberal alike, have contributed to constructing a caricature where the nation is held to personify its people. Israel is now cast as the Eternal Jew: the Personification of Evil and Malicious Influence.

The Eternal Israel.

This is the environment where NHS doctors can post utter Jew-hate invective online and face no disciplinary consequences; where march after march over the past two years under the banner of “pro-Palestine” has paraded anti-Semitism—sorry, anti-Zionism!—in the caricature of the Eternal Jew/Israel, the Personification of Evil; where a man will be prosecuted and convicted for the “religiously aggravated public order offence” of burning a Quran in protest outside the Turkish embassy in London, while imams in British mosques can urge their congregation to “purify” the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem from “the filth of the Jews” and face no charges. This is a country that will bend over backwards to shield Islamism from any scrutiny, where 3 out of 4 British Muslims do not believe that Hamas committed murder and rape on October 7th, while synagogues and Jewish schools have to turn into mini-fortresses of security, and the nation’s leaders offer pithy words of solidarity over the bodies of dead Jews. This is an environment of ongoing, overt and ambient anti-Semitism, satisfying each of the “Three D’s” test of anti-Semitism: demonisation of Jews, double standards selectively applied to Israel, and delegitimisation of Israel’s existence.

Underpinning this noxious asymmetry is the wilful ignorance of why Jews remain so singularly targeted for being Jews. We are invited to understand this Jew-hate either as a lamentable consequence of the perception of Israel’s actions, the work of the proverbial “bad apple”, or just a rogue religious extremist who strayed from the path of tolerance. It can be anything except a sincerely held religious and ideological worldview of deep, malevolent conviction. And those most willing to believe this are the milquetoast Guardianista liberals. Unlike the ideological Tankies to their Left, the milquetoast Guardianista liberal holds no beliefs of any conviction, and consists instead of a worldview of loose heuristics that they can deploy to convey that they are A Good and Moral Person. Believing in nothing themselves, the essentially materialist milquetoast Guardianista liberal cannot fathom that Islamist anti-Semitism is a deep conviction; that “From the river to sea…” is a sincerely held desire; that “Globalise the Intifada!” is not a metaphor. So when Jihad Al-Shamie shows up at Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester, on Yom Kippur, ready to kill Jews and be killed in the process, we are to assume there is no attendant ideological content to his actions.

So we reach the second anniversary of the October 7th pogrom with a fresh reminder that Jews will be killed for being Jews. The political class are shocked—shocked!—and ensure us that WeWillStandTogether™; the Tankies are dancing in the streets—Glory to the Martyrs!—revelling in their Jew-hate; and the milquetoast Guardianista liberals, “well, gosh, violence against anyone is just awful, isn’t it—and Islamophobia is on the rise!—And well, have you seen the Louis Theroux documentary on the West Bank settlements?” One cannot help but be reminded of the adage told by the novelist, Frederic Raphael: Adolf Hitler, in post-war hiding, turns to someone and says:

“Next time, I’m going to finish off the Jews...and two ballet dancers.”

“Why two ballet dancers?”

“See...”, Adolf replies, “who cares what happens to the Jews?”

What the Tankies and milquetoast Guardianistas never seem to put together is to realise that every act, every spraypainted swastika on a synagogue door, every physical attack, simply reinforces the moral necessity of Israel’s existence. And Britain’s Jews are left to build higher walls and put more armed men around their schools and synagogues. The reality is that Aliyah is the only thing that will guarantee their safety.