Debates about Israel and Palestine have, as one scholar remarked to me, become the “third rail” in British academia. That needs to change. The terror attack in Manchester makes clear that UK academics must engage in a public, thoughtful, and careful discussion about Jews, Israel and Palestine.

On October 2^nd, 2025 — on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur — a Synagogue in Manchester was attacked in what has been officially labelled a terrorist incident. Subsequent reporting indicates that some in the UK Jewish community were not surprised; as the Chief Rabbi put it, such an attack was something “we [hoped that] would never see, but which deep down, we knew would come.”

After the attack, senior British Politicians offered support to the country’s Jewish community. The BBC reported that UK-Based Syrian organisations (Syrian British Consortium, Rethink Rebuild Society and Syria Solidarity Campaign) affirmed their condemnation of the attack against houses of worship. They also noted that they, “hope this incident will not be misused to impose restrictions on freedom of expression – particularly the right to peacefully protest and speak out against the ongoing genocide in Gaza.”

This was itself unsurprising. Immediately after the attack, the chief of the Met asked for a Palestinian rally — scheduled for Saturday, October 3^rd — to be “called off” because it would be “insensitive” to hold it. Senior government leaders, including the Prime Minister, have made similar statements.

The BBC (and other news outlets) also quoted a statement by Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in which he claimed that, “weakness in the face of terrorism only brings more terrorism.” Netanyahu’s implicit argument: Israel should respond with force to any terror attack; the failure of the UK to support that “right” makes it a soft target.¹

By why report on what the Prime Minister of Israel has to say about an incident involving Jews in Manchester, in the United Kingdom? Netanyahu is not a spokesman for diasporic Jews. News outlets did not even bother to explain why they included statements by Netanyahu in their coverage of the attack. They treated the Gaza connection as obvious — not just as a matter of the possible intent of the perpetrator, but also as a basic fact about the world.

This kind of narrative is not at all unusual. Its meaning is clear enough: an attack on a Synagogue is part of Israel’s war in Gaza.

This raises a number of questions, ones that I think we need to interrogate. They include:

• How and why are Jews around the world identified with events in Israel, as though Jews everywhere are proxy representatives for Israel?
• What makes a protest in support for Palestinian national aspirations “insensitive” to UK Jews?

The answer to the first question appears straightforward. Jewish organisations often make statements in support of Israel; ties between non-Israeli Jewish communities and the State of Israel have been strong for many decades.

But those ties have frayed in recent years and there was never a true consensus among Jewish communities when it comes to Israel. I explored the complicated nature of the relationship – including the place of Israel in the self-identity of Diaspora Jewry in their sense of self – in my 2014 book, Obligation in Exile. Others have also looked at changes in this relationship, albeit with a focus on the United States, especially since the Gaza War.

Consider one example: the Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s statement on September 21^st, 2025, in response to the recognition of Palestinian Statehood by the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Portugal, and France. It described that recognition as a victory for Hamas. In 2009, the Wiesenthal Centre publicly supported “Cast Lead,” Israel’s prior military intervention in Gaza.

The Wiesenthal Centre began as a Jewish human rights organisation, one devoted to teaching the lessons of the Holocaust. But it became a prominent advocate for Israel, and has issued statements of support for Israel for many years.

How did an institution focused on fighting antisemitism expand its mission to include advocating for Israel and its policies? Simon Wiesenthal was very critical of the early Israeli leadership. The point is that there has always been nuance to what support for Israel means among Jewish organizations and within Jewish communities.²

That brings us to the second question.

Why should protests in support of Palestinian human rights be interpreted as threatening or insensitive to Jews?

Jewish intellectuals and scholars have long disagreed about the relationship between Israel and Jewish identity. The establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, the Six Day War in 1967, the occupation, the rise and fall of the Oslo accords, and the rightward shift in Israeli politics have all shaped — but in now way resolved — how Diaspora Jews view themselves as a people. This helps explain the significant debate that engulfed the Jewish Board of Deputies in the U.K. when one member published an open letter that criticised Israel’s war in Gaza.

The London-based Institute for Jewish Policy Research has studied the sometimes confusing and contradictory beliefs within the British Jewish community about Israel In one telling statistic, they report that “66% think students should be free to demonstrate support for Palestinians, but 61% think British universities are unsafe for Jewish students.”

We have seen clear evidence of rising rising antisemitism in the wake of the October 7^th terrorist attack in Israel. Reuters has even published a list of antisemitism attacks. The Anti-Defamation League reports that already record levels of antisemitism “skyrocketed” post-October 7th 2023.

But when does criticism of Israel become antisemitism?

The most common stance is that criticism of Israel becomes antisemitic when it questions the right of the State of Israel to exist..

That is why many Jews view the slogan “From the River to the Sea” as antisemitic. Itcan refer to the erasure of the State of Israel, as a Jewish State.³ Indeed, that is what the PLO meant when it used the phrase. At the same time, many ordinary people seem to use the phrase as a shorthand for “peace and tolerance” across the entirety of Israel-Palestine. Some observers think we can discern its “true meaning” through a “deep dive” into its history. Even if that were true — the origins of a phrase does not define how any given person use it — that history is too murky to resolve the matter.

Be that as it may, Jewish communities often already interpret criticisms of Israel as a challenge to its right to exist. So we should not be surprised that many understand it as a call for the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state, and presume that protest leaders are hiding behind its ambiguity.

If Israel is viewed as a state that represents the Jewish people – it does not, but Israeli politicians sometimes claim that it does – then it makes sense why perpetrators might see attacks on non-Israeli Jews as an attack on Israel. The antisemitic attack on Canada’s oldest Synagogue, for example, made that connection explicit.⁴

The targeting of Jews as proxies for Israel is not “merely” antisemitism. It also represents an extension of the “dual loyalty” charge that antisemites have long used to paint Jews as, at best, inauthentic members of the national community and, at worst, potential traitors.

Thus, many Jews have entirely legitimate concerns about how attacks on Israel will rebound against them. This gives rise to a dilemma even for the many Jews who support Palestinian rights and oppose Israel’s policies: the very real possibility that efforts to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist as sovereign state will threaten their own personal safety.

The empirical evidence suggests that when the situation between Israel and the Palestinians worsens, so does the security of Diaspora Jews. I also heard this argument repeatedly when I conducted interviews for my 2014 book. The Anti-Defamation League’s 2024 Audit of Antisemitic Incidents explicitly drew this connection. It found that, “For the first time in the history of the Audit, a majority (58%) of all incidents contained elements related to Israel or Zionism.”

To be clear, I am not defending Israel’s security policies. Israeli policy gives good cause to raise serious concerns, including it becoming a pariah state because of its atrocious human rights record against the Palestinians. Yet, the language around criticizing Israel is problematic in a way that is not necessarily the case when we criticize other countries’ policies or behaviour. Of course, other minorities are subject to racist attacks because of international relations. There was the anti-Asian racism that accompanied the Covid-19 pandemic or the rise in Islamophobia post 9/11.

Rather, the difference when it comes to Jews and Israel is that it is the existence of the state itself that appears to function as a ground for antisemitism.

Maybe we should get into a discussion about national self-determination, who deserves it, where, why, and how. But that critical enquiry is rarely the frame of reference when it comes to Israel. Instead, as I’ve written about elsewhere, debate tends to follow zero sums.

Ultimately, the attack in Manchester cannot help but make British Jews (and quite possibly Diaspora Jews in other countries) feel less safe. It is also going to help further inflame debate about Israel and spur public action in support of Palestinian rights. None of these developments is likely to stop the violence in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank.

¹ This logic undermines a lot of Israel’s security strategy (known sometimes as the Iron Wall).

² This connection between Jewish identity and Israel was a large part of the Birthright programme which saw Israel as a mechanism to help sustain Jewish identity and Jewish peoplehood.

³ Some Israeli have used a similar phrase, notably right-wing Israeli politicians, and a very similar phrase was included in the 1977 Likud Party Platform.

⁴ It would be more accurate to describe Emanu-El, located in Victoria, British Columbia, as the oldest in continual use.