Manchester Jews left fear after an “inevitable” attack in the heart of society

Mark Levy was about to attend the Yom Kippur service on Thursday morning at the Hebrew Hitton Park Church in Manchester when the news broke out about the horror that his community was afraid for a long time.

“It was inevitable that something like this would happen,” said Levy, CEO of the Jewish Representative Council in the region.

At 9.31 am, the police received a call that was reported that the car had been transferred to people outside his church and that the man went to Rage.

Within seven minutes, armed officers shot the attacker, who was wearing what was seemed to be an explosive device, the police later said it was “unpopular.”

Two people died and three others remain in the hospital with serious injuries. The police arrested three people on suspicion of committing and preparing terrorism and inciting them. On Thursday evening, they said they believed that the attacker was a British citizen of Syrian origin.

The Jewish community in Manchester – the second largest in the United Kingdom – suffers from a sharp rise Anti -Semitism Hate incidents since the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas.

The security that covers the temples and schools in the Crumpsall area, where the terrorist attack took place on Thursday, was always high, as it was in the surrounding Jewish neighborhoods.

The Jewish community in the United Kingdom has its own organization, the Community Security Fund, which is closely continuing in the case with the police.

However, Levy said that with the high anti -Semitic crime over the past two years, security has risen further, “for this particular reason.”

The latest CST data from January to June 2025, published in August, showed 1521 anti -Semitic incidents in the United Kingdom.

This is the second highest total of anti -Jewish hate accidents recorded by CST in the first half of any year, only exceeded in the first six months of 2024, when 2019 occurred an anti -Semitic accident in the wake of the October 7 attack.

Manchester It is a city proud of cohesion. After the 2017 Islamic terrorist attack on Manchester Square, when 22 people died at the hands of suicide bomber, Salman Abedi, preserving this cohesion was an immediate priority.

Part of the city in which the last attack was particularly multicultural, as it was home to a wave of migration over the centuries. It contains a long -awaited Jewish and Muslim societies living side by side.

Manchester leaders moved quickly on Thursday to restore a calm by emphasizing cohesion. Afzal Khan, a deputy now in favor of Rusholme in the south of the city, participated in the establishment of the Islamic Jewish Forum for Greater Manchester. Khan said he was “praying” for the Jewish community on his holy day.

He added: “Violence is never the answer and Manchester should stand together against these measures.”

Speaking at the scene of the accident on Thursday evening, the mayor of Manchester Greater Index, speaking at the scene, said that the city area “will never allow work designed to cause hatred and division in our societies and violence – we will not allow them to succeed.”

Prime Minister Sir Kerr Starmer also moved to calm the Jewish society. He said: “I promise you that I will do everything in my endeavor to ensure the security it deserves, starting with the presence of a more clear police that protects your community.”

The government immediately escalated security throughout the country, as the police said that it had deployed additional officers about the Jewish temples and the positions of Jewish society in London.

Such movements are unlikely to be afraid within the Jewish society in Manchester.

She remained in the police collar two hours after the attack, she was a young Jewish woman fighting tears as she was talking to the Vinanchel Times times.

“I am just afraid,” she said, adding that she felt “in danger” because of her religion in a way that she did not do previously.

“But the whole thing is logical, because … as they knew what was today,” she said, referring to Kippur, when the Jews attend the synagogue in large numbers.

The timing of an attack on Thursday means that many worshipers in other places of the city were not known immediately that it had happened.

Levy, whose father and grandfather were both chief chiefs of the synagogue, discovered that his parents were safe after seeing them on TV coverage.

He confessed to Manchester’s reputation in cultural pluralism, but he said that his community had had radical talks for a long time.

“I think we will have to start looking at alternatives,” he said about whether the country is a safe place for the Jews.

He said about “whether the Jewish community is welcome in the United Kingdom,” whether this conversation occurred about dinner tables for 12 to 18 months.

He added: “, whether the country will be welcoming my children as it was four or five generations.”