On the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, Britain’s Jewish community was once again terrorized at what should have been the safest of spaces: a synagogue.

The Yom Kippur terror attack targeting worshippers at the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation in Manchester was met with the usual chorus of hollow condemnation from politicians across the spectrum, accompanied by the same weary assurances that “the Jewish community will be protected.”

But this did not happen in a vacuum.

Just hours after the attack, British police confirmed that they were treating the incident as terrorism. The suspect was identified as Jihad al-Shamie, a Syrian asylum seeker who had been granted British citizenship. Yet even as the facts became clear, parts of the media and political establishment responded with familiar hand-wringing over how such an atrocity could have occurred — as though the answer wasn’t staring them in the face.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews put it bluntly, describing the attack as “sadly something we feared was coming.”

And indeed, it was.

For more than two years, the UK’s media and political class have helped fuel a hostile atmosphere, in which antisemitism has surged to levels unseen in decades. Since Hamas’ October 7 massacre, much of the British press has amplified narratives that demonize Israel while excusing or downplaying Palestinian terrorism — creating a climate where violence against Jews does feel almost inevitable.

A Rare Moment of Accountability

That climate was laid bare on live television.

During a Sky News segment following the Manchester attack, Lord John Woodcock — the government’s former independent adviser on political violence — directly confronted the network for its role in shaping public hostility toward Jews.

Woodcock, whose title in the UK’s House of Lords is Baron Walney, described the terror attack as “a product of the way in which Israel’s actions are seen and portrayed — I’m afraid to say it, by Sky News as well as other media outlets — as uniquely evil and worthy of a level of focus simply not afforded to other dire situations across the world.”

It was an extraordinary on-air moment of accountability — one that exposed a truth the media refuses to acknowledge.

MUST WATCH: @SkyNews won’t post this on their own social media because former UK govt advisor on political violence, @LordWalney, calls them & UK media out for portraying Israeli actions as “almost uniquely evil & worthy of a level of focus which is simply not afforded to other… pic.twitter.com/WrPgTat6Lk

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) October 2, 2025

Even as Woodcock pointed to the double standards and moral obsession that define coverage of Israel, the Sky News presenter attempted to push back, defending the network’s record. It was a revealing exchange: faced with criticism that was both factual and unanswerable, Sky News’s instinct was to deny, deflect, and preserve its self-image as neutral.

That, right there, is the problem.

When even undeniable evidence of bias is raised — when a former government adviser points out the disproportionate scrutiny applied to Israel — the British media refuses to reflect. It cannot see that its relentless framing of Israel as a moral pariah has consequences.

The Media’s Habit of “Both-Sidesing”

Almost as predictable as the politicians’ “shock” was the media’s reflexive attempt to “both sides” the story.

Reporting live from outside the synagogue, Sky News anchor Sarah-Jane Mee invited Akeela Ahmed, CEO of the British Muslim Trust, to comment on the attack. Incredibly, Mee suggested that the day’s events had “highlighted the vulnerabilities of different faith groups.”

“While Jews were targeted today,” she added, “we know Muslims could be targeted in these kinds of incidents.”

The remark was jaw-dropping. Muslims, she implied, might become victims in antisemitic Islamist terror attacks.

This is what moral relativism looks like.

“My heart goes out to everybody who was impacted”

Chief executive at British Muslim Trust Akeela Ahmed tells @skysarahjane she believes the increase in religiously motivated hate crimes comes from “misunderstanding and prejudice of people of faith”

 Sky 501 and YouTube pic.twitter.com/ZTwyC6d343

— Sky News (@SkyNews) October 2, 2025

Instead of confronting the uncomfortable fact that Jews were targeted outside their own house of worship by a man radicalized by antisemitic ideology, the media rushed to dilute the specificity of the crime.

Reuters reported that the incident had “raised fears of more violence and division across faiths.” The BBC insisted for nearly 24 hours after the attack that the “motive” was unclear. Each time, the framing softened the reality: this was not an attack on “faith communities.” It was an attack on Jews.

Not on Muslims. Not on “believers.” On Jews.

Back to the Media

The press will condemn antisemitism in the abstract but refuses to recognize how its own reporting perpetuates it in practice. For years, journalists have blurred the line between criticism of Israel and vilification of Jews, normalizing the idea that Jewish collectivity — whether expressed through nationhood or worship — is suspect.

When headlines equate terrorists with their victims, when outlets question Israel’s right to defend itself but ignore Hamas’ atrocities, when Jewish suffering is minimized or reframed as a “clash of communities,” the result is not moral balance, but complicity.

The Manchester attack was not inevitable, actually, but it was predictable. And until Britain’s media acknowledges the role it has played in feeding the flames, the words “never again” will remain just that: words.

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.

I first noticed something was off on the first day of class. I had given my students in my “Sociology of American Jewish life” course at Tulane University blank index cards, asking them to write five words they associate with American Jews. The word antisemitism didn’t appear once, and neither did Israel.

Last week, it happened again. When I asked students to choose topics from the 2020 Pew report on American Jews for small group discussions, no one chose antisemitism or Israel.

What was going on? Antisemitism dominates conversations among lay leaders, philanthropists and academics. Universities are launching new antisemitism studies centers. Yet here were 20 Jewish studies students avoiding the subject. The Hillel director confirmed he’d seen the same pattern: low attendance at events on these topics.

So I turned to my students — almost all Jewish themselves — and asked them to write anonymous reflections on this pattern. I wanted them to help me understand what felt like a significant shift from previous years, when these topics dominated classroom discussions.

Here is what I learned:

My students are exhausted. Not physically tired, but soul-weary from the constant barrage of antisemitism they encounter online. “Seeing constant antisemitism and antizionism has just made me so tired of it that it’s easier to ignore,” one wrote. “When I’m in Jewish spaces, I prefer to focus on the positive things … because it feels like antisemitism is a battle we’re already losing.”

They see antisemitism everywhere on social media — on Instagram, TikTok, even in comment sections barely related to Jewish topics. It’s become so normalized that one student admitted they “don’t even get surprised anymore when I see crazy antisemitism.” Another described it as being talked about “on the news so much as well as talked about in everyday life” that bringing it down further in class feels redundant.

But perhaps most revealing was this: They want their Jewish studies classroom to be different. “When I am in class, I enjoy learning about new topics and not about topics that I already talk about and experience every single day,” one student explained. Another put it more bluntly: “I don’t want the thing I bring up when talking about Judaism to be antisemitism in a class setting, where it is something we deal with all the time outside of it.”

The Israel conversation has become even more fraught. Students described being paralyzed by the fear of “saying the wrong thing by accident.” The topic has become so contentious that it’s “a very sensitive time period because of October 7th,” making people hesitant to speak up even in Jewish spaces. One student noted that discussing Israel has become “a dividing point even within the Jewish community,” creating rifts with family members and friends.

The pressure to be perfectly informed weighs heavily on them. ‘I don’t feel as educated on that, and in most contexts, I don’t want to bring it up because I don’t want to say the wrong thing by accident,’ one student confessed. They feel caught between the expectation to have authoritative opinions as Jews and their honest uncertainty about complex issues. Another described finding it ‘hard to delve into’ topics when unsure if they’re conveying accurate information. This burden of representation — the unspoken expectation that every Jewish student must be an articulate defender of their people — has become another silencing force.

I don’t take this silence as apathy, but rather about self-preservation. My students are keenly aware that even among close friends, there might be hidden antisemitism. They’ve learned to perform constant risk assessments about when and where it’s safe to express their views. As one observed, people are either intensely engaged with these topics or “have little to no interest talking about it … and don’t feel comfortable sharing their opinions.”

What struck me most was their desire to reclaim Jewish identity from being primarily defined by hatred against Jews. These young Jews want to explore their heritage, culture, and traditions without every conversation circling back to those who despise them. They’re not in denial — they know antisemitism exists. They’re just tired of it taking up so much space in their Jewish lives.

This generational shift matters. While Jewish institutions pour resources into combating antisemitism and defending Israel — crucial work, to be clear — our young people are signaling they need something more. They need spaces where being Jewish isn’t synonymous with being embattled. They need opportunities to engage with Jewish life, learning, and culture on its own terms.

My classroom revelation taught me this: If we want to engage the next generation, we need to balance necessary vigilance with joyful exploration of what makes Jewish life meaningful. Our students aren’t abandoning the fight — they’re asking for the chance to remember what we’re fighting for.

—
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At the 2014 Climate March in New York City, Rabbi Arthur Waskow, who passed away Monday at the venerable age of 92, rode atop a makeshift Noah’s Ark. The float was constructed by Auburn Seminary and a coalition of faith organizations to highlight the deep connections between religious values and environmentalism.  I was honored to be on that ark alongside him, and, looking out on the throngs of marchers, I snapped a photo and showed it to him. “The Rebbe and his legacy,” I said.

“What legacy?!” Reb Arthur responded, then a spry 80 years of age. “I’m still right here!”

This was Rabbi Arthur Waskow: prophetic, wise, cranky, witty, insightful, and decades ahead of his time. Like his contemporaries who have also recently left us — Rabbi Michael Lerner, for example — Reb Arthur (as his students called him) transformed how Jews understand themselves and their religion’s relationship to political engagement.

To an inner circle of Jewish social justice activists and Jewish Renewalniks, Rabbi Waskow was indeed one of our rebbes.  Together with his wife Phyllis Berman, he co-created a form of Jewish spirituality and consciousness that wove together progressive, even radical, political engagement with ritual and liturgical innovation. Paraphrasing what was once said about the Velvet Underground, there weren’t a lot of people in this inner circle, but all of them went on to become spiritual leaders and activists too.

But Reb Arthur’s legacy extends far beyond his fans to hundreds of thousands of Jews who don’t even know they’ve been influenced by him.

In 1969, Waskow created the “Freedom Seder,” a new version of the Passover Haggadah that, in his words, “connected the Jewish exodus from Egypt with the struggle for Civil Rights in America and Social Justice around the world.” This may seem banal today, but in 1969, it was unheard-of.  While there were plenty of radicals, hippies and artists who were Jewish (Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Allen Ginsberg, the list goes on and on), few embraced Judaism as such, as a religious and communal tradition with something worthwhile to teach. Meanwhile, while we’ve all seen that photo of Abraham Joshua Heschel marching with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in fact large segments of the Jewish community were antagonistic to antiwar activism, civil rights activism, and the array of left-wing political causes that animated that period known as the Sixties.

Rabbi Waskow brought these threads together. Well before doing so became a buzzword, Waskow made Judaism newly relevant to a generation of young American Jews.  He created new rituals on old foundations, and breathed new life into old words.  Just consider his book titles: The Bush is Burning! Radical Judaism faces the pharaohs of the modern superstate; Godwrestling; or one of his newest, Handbook for Heretics and Prophets: A New Torah for a New World. (Those are only three of twelve, I hasten to add.)

This work continued for decades, through the Shalom Center, which Waskow founded, and later in ALEPH: The Alliance for Jewish Renewal, which, for a while anyway, brought together Waskow’s political radicalism with the emergent spirituality of Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and others.

Truthfully, though, there was always a tension — often productive, sometimes less so — between these two directions. (Waskow may have coined the phrase ‘Jewish Renewal’ in a 1979, but there are different versions of that story.)  Reb Arthur had little interest in meditation and mysticism; his was, in the words of another book title, a down-to-earth Judaism.  He loved Jewish ritual, wrote a book about Jewish holidays, and, with Berman, proposed to transform Jewish languages of prayer and of God.  Yet he had little patience when contemplative practice turned too inward, or turned away from the problems of justice toward mystical or theological speculation.

Conversely, Waskow’s radicalism often chafed against the sensibilities of many Jews. He was a left-wing activist long before he was a Jewish spiritual leader, and was outspoken from beginning to end.  The Freedom Seder cited not only Gandhi and King, but Nat Turner and Eldridge Cleaver; it was published in the leftist Ramparts magazine; it was first hosted by the left-wing Jews for Urban Justice.  His was not a polite liberalism.

One remarkable example: In 1969, Waskow delivered a Yom Kippur sermon at Washington’s Tifereth Israel synagogue demanding that congregants confess and atone for “paying soldiers to burn Vietnamese babies alive… supporting a system of grocery stores that starve some children into apathy and death… paying and applauding policemen who gas, shoot and beat Black people…” and many other sins. The response was just what you’d expect: in the words of one account, “a burst of indignation” from attendees who said he should focus more on issues that affect Jews. Ours is not the first time in which the Jewish Establishment has disowned and demonized Jewish Leftists.

And while Waskow may have mellowed somewhat with age, he didn’t mellow that much. In later years, he was excoriated for his criticisms of Israel’s actions in Lebanon and in the Occupied Territories; his peace work with Christian and Muslim leaders; and his opposition to the ADL and defense of the so-called ‘Ground Zero Mosque.’ Waskow was not always shaking his fist at the sky; after all, yet another of his books is called Seasons of our Joy. But he lived his life as a prophet, and prophets are rarely popular in their times — just ask Jeremiah.

Still, Waskow’s legacy — now I can use the term — runs deep and wide.  He helped create Jewish environmentalism; if your synagogue is reducing its carbon footprint, in part it has Reb Arthur to thank (though he would be the first to say that such steps are pointless without collective political action). He and Berman transformed Jewish liturgy in ways that rippled out well beyond progressive communities. And broadly speaking, Reb Arthur pioneered the entire notion that social activism and Jewish spirituality — not only Jewish identity and moral teaching, but also Jewish ritual and text and myth — enrich one another.

These teachings are still prophetic today. So, as Reb Arthur would surely insist, I will give him the last words, taken from the Dayenu liturgy in the original 1969 Freedom Seder:

The struggles for freedom that remain will be more dark and difficult than any we have met so far. For we must struggle for a freedom that enfolds stern justice, stern bravery, and stern love. Blessed art thou, O Lord our God! who hast confronted us with the necessity of choice and of creating our own book of thy Law. How many and how hard are the choices and the tasks the Almighty has set before us!

For if we were to end a single genocide but not to stop the other wars that kill men and women as we sit here, it would not be sufficient;

If we were to end those bloody wars but not disarm the nations of the weapons that could destroy all mankind, it would not be sufficient;

If we were to disarm the nations but not to end the brutality with which the police attack black people in some countries, brown people in others; Moslems in some countries, Hindus in other; Baptists in some countries, atheists in others; Communists in some countries, conservatives in others, it would not be sufficient;

If we were to end outright police brutality but not prevent some people from wallowing in luxury while others starved, it would not be sufficient;

If we were to make sure that no one starved but were not to free the daring poets from their jails, it would not be sufficient;

If we were to free the poets from their jails but to train the minds of people so that they could not understand the poets, it would not be sufficient;

If we educated all men and women to understand the free creative poets but forbade them to explore their own inner ecstasies, it would not be sufficient;

If we allowed men and women to explore their inner ecstasies but would not allow them to love one another and share in the human fraternity, it would not be sufficient.

How much then are we in duty bound to struggle, work, share, give, think, plan, feel, organize, sit-in, speak out, hope, and be on behalf of Mankind!

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