(JNS) Don’t expect the latest incident of antisemitic violence to wake the world up to the incitement against Jews that has swept across the globe in the last two years since Oct. 7. The attack on Yom Kippur at the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation in Manchester, England, that cost the lives of two Jews rightly provoked condemnations from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and other politicians in the United Kingdom, as well as shocked headlines around the world.

Still, there is something important lacking in the responses to the coverage of this tragedy on the part of those in the media, global organizations like the United Nations, or those who have joined in, supported, justified and rationalized pro-Hamas demonstrations and activism throughout the West. Their willingness to spread the anti-Israel propaganda put out by terrorists who led the Palestinian Arab assault across the Gaza border on Oct. 7, 2023 has helped mainstream and normalize blood libels about the Jewish state and the Jews. And that has contributed to an atmosphere of hate that makes atrocities like the one committed at the British synagogue not merely possible but inevitable.

See: UK at the crossroads

Threats against Jews

Though they were willing to admit the obvious and declare the attack an act of domestic terrorism, British authorities say they are still working to discover the motive of Jihad al-Shamie, the assailant who was killed at the scene by police. He has been identified as a 35-year-old British citizen of Syrian descent. Three other people who have, at press time, not yet been identified are reported to have assisted him in carrying out the assault, which involved a car being driven into the crowd of Jewish worshippers outside the synagogue and a knife attack. But you don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to realize that the current atmosphere, where threats against Jews are constantly heard at mass demonstrations in London and other British cities in support of Palestinian terrorism, is part of the equation.

We’ve seen a string of violent attacks during the past year in the United States, including the shooting deaths of two young Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, DC; the firebombing of a march for Israeli hostages in Boulder, where an 82-year-old Holocaust survivor was killed; and an overnight arson attack on the Harrisburg residence of Gov. Josh Shapiro during Passover. All were committed in the name of “Free Palestine, “a slogan whose meaning is the erasure of Israel, not the creation of an Arab state alongside it, which the Palestinians have repeatedly demonstrated that they don’t want.

Yet when pro-Hamas mobs on college campuses and city streets chant “From the river to the sea,” and especially, “globalize the intifada,” those aren’t phrases consistent with the concern for human rights or the plight of Palestinians in the current war. They are a demand for the genocide of Jews and terrorism against them everywhere. And that’s exactly what happened in Manchester—the English city with the largest concentration of Jews outside of metropolitan London—and in those attacks in America.

It’s true that only Jihad al-Shamie and his accomplices are directly responsible for the Manchester crime, as it is equally true that only the assailants who proclaimed that they killed in the name of “Free Palestine” should be held accountable for those crimes.

The ‘genocide’ blood libel

Even if these are all so-called “lone wolf” attacks, they point to how the demonization of Jews has been legitimized in public discourse. Those who have taken sides against Israel in the war that followed the Oct. 7 massacre of 1,200 people in southern Israel haven’t just expressed sympathy for the people who participated in and cheered for those unspeakable atrocities. They’ve claimed that the just war Israel is fighting against Hamas is a crime and falsely asserted that its purpose is the annihilation of Palestinians. That’s despite the care that the Israel Defense Forces takes to avoid civilian casualties, while Hamas is deliberately seeking to endanger and even starve their own people.

As a result of this, the charge that Israel is committing “genocide” in Gaza—a preposterous and libelous falsehood that is an attempt to redefine the word in a way that would encompass virtually any armed conflict—is now routinely published or broadcast in legacy corporate press outlets, even in offhand references as if it were a historic and unchallenged fact.

This is not merely biased journalism. Rather, it’s a talking point for delegitimizing Israel’s right of self-defense against a genocidal terrorist movement. It is also shorthand for smearing all Israelis and Jews as the moral equivalent of the Nazis, an antisemitic trope. The point is not just to deflect attention from the goals of the Palestinians, whose national identity is inextricably linked with their century-old war against the right of Jews to live in their ancient homeland. By labeling Israelis and those who support them—as is true for the overwhelming majority of Jews—in this manner, those who employ these canards are implicitly legitimizing violence against them.

That’s the context for attacks such as the Manchester synagogue murders.

Israel’s foes claim that linking their libelous rhetoric to antisemitism and violence is unfair. The liberal media that both defend their efforts and help mainstream their talking points generally agree. They assert that noting the way their advocacy and actions legitimize murderous attacks is unmerited since all they are doing is “criticizing” Israel.

Of course, Israel shouldn’t be exempt from “criticism.” However, individuals who chant for its destruction aren’t “criticizing” it. They are cheering on those who work for that genocidal goal. Criticism is about changing actual policy. What those who scream “From the river to the sea” are endorsing is the position held by most Palestinians in which the one Jewish state on the planet is considered illegitimate and therefore worthy of destruction.

Starmer’s responsibility

That is also why the condemnations of the Manchester attack coming from leaders like Starmer ring hollow.

By recognizing Palestinian statehood unilaterally, along with France, Canada and Australia, without Hamas releasing the hostages it took on Oct. 7, or a commitment on their part to disarm and end their war to destroy Israel, Starmer’s government was rewarding the terrorists for their barbarous actions.

This was an outrageously ill-timed and irresponsible effort to undermine both Israel’s campaign to defeat Hamas and American diplomatic efforts to end the war. It sent a signal to the terrorists—and their foreign enablers and supporters—that destroying the group responsible for the largest mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust was not as important as appeasing domestic constituencies of leftist and Muslim voters who hate Israel and the Jews.

The idea that you can separate loathing for the Jewish state and the loathing of Jews is a myth that has been debunked by the violence that Israel-haters have employed against Jewish communities around the world. So, too, is the notion that policies that reward violence against Jews don’t validate and ultimately encourage those who want to translate their Jew-hatred into crimes such as the one in Manchester.

There, as was the case in the US capital, Colorado and Pennsylvania, we saw the “Globalize the intifada” slogan at work. As long as most of the media continues to spread blood libels about Israel and politicians either endorse them or are pressured into discriminatory and harmful policies because of them, the flood of Jewish blood spilled by these “Free Palestine” antisemites will only continue to increase.

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