DDU Statement condemning the antisemitic murders of 2 October 2025 in Manchester 

DDU, with many others, unequivocally condemns the antisemitic murders of two people (four others remain in hospital suffering serious injuries) and offer our deepest condolences to the families affected.

In his excellent article, our Advisory Council member, Stephen Pollard, wrote:

horrifying as this incident may be, I doubt that any of Britain’s 287,000 Jews will be surprised that such an event  has come to pass.

This could have something to do with the fact that in the first half of 2025, according to the Community Security Trust, there have been 1,521 antisemitic incidents. Yet the government thinks that a definition of Islamophobia is what is needed. According to Tell Mama, there have been 17 attacks on mosques or Islamic institutions between June and September 2025. Tell Mama is rightly critical of the government’s focus on definitions, which is unconnected to any reality on the ground and makes matters of communalist division and tension worse.

For Jews in Britain, the reality on the ground, since the pogrom of  October 7th two years ago, is that the government continues to treat Israel as a pariah state. As Nigel Tobias, from the Jewish Representative Council of Greater Manchester pointed out on Times Radio, this means Jews, too, are increasingly treated as pariah citizens.

Recognising Palestine as a state, to signal his disapproval of Israel, while also threatening sanctions of Hamas to appease America, Starmer has the moral authority and political judgment of a headless chicken. In attributing all responsibility for the war to Israel over there, Starmer green lights a deadly cultural trend over here: Jews are fair game for verbal and, increasingly, physical attack – from having excrement smeared on synagogues to yesterday’s murders.

Tobias made a really good point in response to Starmer’s offer of more security. It’s not good enough. What we need is a culture where Jews need less, not more, security. This is unlikely to happen while we have a prime minister who thinks recognising a terrorist group of a yet-to-exist state is a wise political move. Such poor political and ethical judgments from on high are unlikely to bring the peace most of us want over there. But over here, such policies encourage idiots who, on the same day two Jewish people were murdered in Britain, felt that performing their outrage about the blocking of Greta Thunberg’s flotilla, with a good measure of Viva Palestina thrown in, was a socially and morally acceptable thing to do.

There are many aspects to the rise of antisemitism in Britain today, but just as a start, did anyone from the relevant authorities contact the organisers and suggest they should postpone their protest – just out of human decency if nothing else?