By Rabbi Menachem Margolin
The brutal and murderous attack outside the Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester on Yom Kippur was not an isolated act of madness. It was a grim reminder that for Europe’s Jews, the question is no longer if such attacks will occur, but when and where the next one will strike.
When a car is driven into worshippers and a knife is drawn outside a synagogue during the holiest day of the Jewish year, we are not witnessing a random crime. We are seeing the end result of a climate that has been left to fester for far too long. For Europe’s Jewish communities, the writing has been on the wall for years: the continent has failed to shield them from the steady march of antisemitism.
Twelve months ago, the European Jewish Association – acutely aware of the impacts being felt by Jewish communities across the continent – called on governments to declare a state of emergency against antisemitism.
It was not an attempt at rhetorical headline grabbing, but an earnest, desperate plea for action.
We warned that the surge in hate crimes, the increasing radicalization of protests, and the corrosive language against Israel were converging into a perfect storm of hate. Few listened. In Manchester, the storm broke once again. Tomorrow, it could be in Paris, Berlin, or Brussels.
We must abandon the illusion that these attacks are anomalies. They are symptoms of a disease that has spread across our democracies, a disease that mutates with the prevailing political winds but always ends up blowing towards Jews.
Protecting Europe’s Jews is not a “Jewish issue”. It is a test of Europe itself. If we cannot guarantee the safety of the continent’s smallest minority, we cannot claim to defend the principles of democracy, tolerance, and pluralism that are supposed to define us.
The choice is ours: either we continue to treat each attack as an isolated outrage, or we finally recognize the pattern for what it is and act accordingly. The next question is not if another synagogue will be targeted, but whether Europe will be prepared when it happens.
The rise of “Israelised antisemitism”
Today we are not facing the antisemitism of the 1930s, dressed in uniforms and marching under banners. Today it is much more insidious, more palatable to mainstream debate, and therefore in many ways more potent and more dangerous.
Researchers, including those at Sweden’s Segerstedt Institute, describe this as Israelised antisemitism: the blurring of lines between legitimate criticism of Israel and hatred of Jews as a collective.
It works like this: Israel is demonized as a criminal state, accused of genocide, equated with Nazism. These exaggerations do not stay confined to the realm of politics. They travel, they morph, and they land on Jews in Paris, Manchester, Antwerp, or Copenhagen, who suddenly find themselves seen not as citizens of Europe but as extensions of a despised foreign power.
Lest there be any doubt, the Manchester attacker, who came to the UK from Syria, did not ask the worshippers about their views on the Middle East. He saw Jews, and that was enough.
What Europe must do now
Europe must act on two fronts — immediately and long term.
In the short term, governments must provide the highest level of security for synagogues, Jewish schools, and community centers. Police presence, intelligence cooperation, and rapid response capabilities must be scaled up to match the reality of the threat. Anything less is negligence.
But in the long term, security measures alone will not save us, nor is locking up Jewish communities behind fences and police barricades. Politicians, opinion leaders, and media have a duty to stop fueling a climate where Israel is relentlessly demonized and antisemitism is given oxygen under the guise of political discourse.
Legitimate criticism of Israel is not only acceptable but necessary in any democracy. But when the language slides into collective blame, into delegitimization of Israel’s existence, or into chants that call for its destruction, then we are no longer debating foreign policy — we are normalizing antisemitism.
Europe cannot afford to wait for another Manchester, another Toulouse, another Halle. The warning lights are flashing. Jewish communities have been sounding the alarm for years.
The danger is not abstract. It is present, visible, and lethal. And it needs to stop. Right now.
Rabbi Menachem Margolin is Chairman of the European Jewish Association (EJA) in Brussels.