A week ago, I sat in a large crowd at a synagogue in North London to listen to Yossi Cohen, the former director of the Mossad, speak about his new memoir, The Sword of Freedom. Among countless other operations of staggering scope and ingenuity, Cohen led preparations for the walkie-talkie attack that wiped out Hezbollah’s top brass. He understands risk and threat like nobody else.
At one point, while explaining the blunders that failed to prevent October 7, he asked the host if there were any known and specific threats to the gathered crowd that evening. The answer appeared to be no. And yet, Cohen pointed out, there was robust security in place – several people in hi-vis checking names and bags, in and outside the gates.
There is always a risk with Jewish gatherings, and in the absence of intelligence spelling out a clear and specific threat, you’d better prepare for the worst just in case you’ve missed something. Israel failed to do this prior to October 7, and so on the day, 6,000 Gazan terrorists on motorbikes and paragliders were able to overwhelm the defences of the most sophisticated security system the world has ever known.
But for European Jews, a sense of unease and threat every time we enter a Jewish building is part of life. And there is always insufficient intel: which is why Jews are still stabbed, shot or blown up in synagogues from Paris to Pittsburgh, shopping in kosher supermarkets, or while simply existing in the Jewish state.
I thought about Cohen’s remarks on Thursday, the Jewish day of atonement, Yom Kippur, after the Syrian-born terrorist Jihad Al-Shamie rammed his car into the congregants entering the Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester, before getting out and stabbing everyone he could, then stabbing at the windows of the shul trying to get in, before being shot dead.
It is perhaps not rocket science that giving citizenship to a person called Jihad could backfire, but at any rate Jihad Al-Shamie had not been on the radar of the security services, nor Prevent.
Still, he was far from a surprise, and there are many, many like him in Western countries, let in, given citizenship, given benefits and protected with our rights. He and many like him – including those in the Islamo-Leftist, pro-Palestine movement – are the risk, the threat, that hovers over Jews in Britain, Europe, Australia, Canada, and now America. It used to be neo-Nazis and skinheads, but now it is they that are the reason we have security in front of our schools, nurseries, cultural centres, and shuls.
And instead of being fought one by one on the beaches, in the fields and streets – as Churchill would have wanted – they are instead emboldened, encouraged, and protected by police, Whitehall, city mayors and a Westminster who have been brainwashed into insisting it’s actually the threat of Islamophobia, and the cause of the Palestinians and their terrorist sympathisers, that merit real concern. We have seen again and again since October 7 how “free speech” rights are suddenly to be defended when young people cry out and chant in favour of Hamas.
The aftermath of the attack was surreal for many of us. The usual drivel about feelings of sadness and shock, and how we wouldn’t let our “unity” be disrupted by those “seeking to sow division” spewed out on automatic pilot from officials and Very Important People. Decent-hearted non-Jews poured out expressions of shock; the term “heart-broken”.
Surprised? Really? Never mind planets: what universe are people in? Shocked? Saddened? When just hours after the attack, some of the most gleeful so far of the “Gaza” mass marches took place all over the UK, with Parliament Square and Liverpool Street full of the triumphant waving of the Palestinian flag as Jews trembled and washed the blood of their brethren from the street?
A week ago, I sat in a large crowd at a synagogue in North London to listen to Yossi Cohen, the former director of the Mossad, speak about his new memoir, The Sword of Freedom. Among countless other operations of staggering scope and ingenuity, Cohen led preparations for the walkie-talkie attack that wiped out Hezbollah’s top brass. He understands risk and threat like nobody else.
At one point, while explaining the blunders that failed to prevent October 7, he asked the host if there were any known and specific threats to the gathered crowd that evening. The answer appeared to be no. And yet, Cohen pointed out, there was robust security in place – several people in hi-vis checking names and bags, in and outside the gates.
There is always a risk with Jewish gatherings, and in the absence of intelligence spelling out a clear and specific threat, you’d better prepare for the worst just in case you’ve missed something. Israel failed to do this prior to October 7, and so on the day, 6,000 Gazan terrorists on motorbikes and paragliders were able to overwhelm the defences of the most sophisticated security system the world has ever known.
But for European Jews, a sense of unease and threat every time we enter a Jewish building is part of life. And there is always insufficient intel: which is why Jews are still stabbed, shot or blown up in synagogues from Paris to Pittsburgh, shopping in kosher supermarkets, or while simply existing in the Jewish state.
I thought about Cohen’s remarks on Thursday, the Jewish day of atonement, Yom Kippur, after the Syrian-born terrorist Jihad Al-Shamie rammed his car into the congregants entering the Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester, before getting out and stabbing everyone he could, then stabbing at the windows of the shul trying to get in, before being shot dead.
It is perhaps not rocket science that giving citizenship to a person called Jihad could backfire, but at any rate Jihad Al-Shamie had not been on the radar of the security services, nor Prevent.
Still, he was far from a surprise, and there are many, many like him in Western countries, let in, given citizenship, given benefits and protected with our rights. He and many like him – including those in the Islamo-Leftist, pro-Palestine movement – are the risk, the threat, that hovers over Jews in Britain, Europe, Australia, Canada, and now America. It used to be neo-Nazis and skinheads, but now it is they that are the reason we have security in front of our schools, nurseries, cultural centres, and shuls.
And instead of being fought one by one on the beaches, in the fields and streets – as Churchill would have wanted – they are instead emboldened, encouraged, and protected by police, Whitehall, city mayors and a Westminster who have been brainwashed into insisting it’s actually the threat of Islamophobia, and the cause of the Palestinians and their terrorist sympathisers, that merit real concern. We have seen again and again since October 7 how “free speech” rights are suddenly to be defended when young people cry out and chant in favour of Hamas.
The aftermath of the attack was surreal for many of us. The usual drivel about feelings of sadness and shock, and how we wouldn’t let our “unity” be disrupted by those “seeking to sow division” spewed out on automatic pilot from officials and Very Important People. Decent-hearted non-Jews poured out expressions of shock; the term “heart-broken”.
Surprised? Really? Never mind planets: what universe are people in? Shocked? Saddened? When just hours after the attack, some of the most gleeful so far of the “Gaza” mass marches took place all over the UK, with Parliament Square and Liverpool Street full of the triumphant waving of the Palestinian flag as Jews trembled and washed the blood of their brethren from the street?