From what can be gathered so far, the attack on Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation synagogue in Manchester was undoubtedly antisemitic. The timing can hardly have been a coincidence – Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar – and it carries a grim echo of the atrocities infamously committed by Hamas on 7 October 2023 at a music festival in Israel.
At a holy place of worship, on the solemn day of atonement, three people, including the perpetrator, are dead, and three more are in hospital. The police response was rapid and lethal, and undoubtedly saved many more people from harm, especially as the subject was, according to Stephen Watson, the chief constable of Greater Manchester Police, wearing “a vest which had the appearance of an explosive device”. The synagogue was full of children – a terrifying thought.
