MANCHESTER – In Crumpsall, a quiet suburb in north Manchester, the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation has anchored Ashkenazi Orthodox life since 1967. On Yom Kippur, the most solemn day in the Jewish year, that calm was shattered.
As congregants gathered for prayer and reflection, the squeal of tyres cut through the hush. A 35-year-old man, Jihad Al-Shamie, a British national of Syrian heritage, drove into pedestrians outside the synagogue, then began stabbing people with a knife.
Two Jewish men died at the scene, and three others, including a security guard, were taken to the hospital with critical injuries. Al-Shamie wore what looked like an explosive vest, which proved to be fake.
Armed officers shot him dead six minutes after the attack began. Counter-terrorism police treated it as a terror incident and arrested two men in their 30s and a woman in her 60s on suspicion of assisting.
Witness accounts painted a picture of panic and fear. Rob Kanter, a 45-year-old lecturer who studies Jewish-Muslim relations, was inside when the screaming started. He said people barricaded doors and moved children and older worshippers away from windows.
He described the assault as an attack on the community’s spirit, on Yom Kippur of all days. Footage later showed an elderly neighbour collapsed on the pavement, her prayer shawl stained with blood, while police fired at the attacker. By evening, bouquets lined the synagogue’s iron gates, their scent mingling with wet leaves and light rain.
Details from Manchester police and community sources suggest a slow slide into Islamic extremism. Al-Shamie, born in Manchester to Syrian refugees who fled in the 1990s, grew up in the city’s mixed but tense northern districts. Neighbours called him withdrawn.
Anti-Jewish Hate
He once worked as a delivery driver and dropped out of social life after 2023, around the time the Israel-Hamas war began. Investigators are examining encrypted Telegram channels linked to him that carried Islamist content and anti-Jewish hate.
A former colleague, speaking without a name, said he changed after the war overseas, and that it lit a fuse at home. Greater Manchester Police handed the case to the Met’s counter-terror unit and said there had been no prior warning about him.
Raids at his flat in Salford found documents echoing Hamas slogans and calls for jihad against Zionists.
This violence did not appear from nowhere. It sits within a sharp rise in antisemitism across the UK since 7 October 2023. The Community Security Trust (CST), which tracks incidents against Jews, recorded 1,521 cases from January to June 2025, the second-highest half-year on record, averaging more than 200 per month.
That marked a 25 percent fall from the peak of early 2024, but still a 58 percent jump on pre-war levels. Physical assaults rose to 73 in that period, including beatings, stabbings, and arson directed at Jewish sites. Online abuse was relentless, too, with 1,240 hateful posts logged in 2024, from swastika emojis swarming Jewish creators to conspiracy claims about supposed Zionist control.
Manchester Attack Condemned
The figures tell a story of strain and fear. Schools reported 260 incidents in 2024, including graffiti, playground taunts, and threats against a Jewish chaplain’s family in Leeds. Universities saw a fivefold surge. Jewish students were doxxed, and campus events were disrupted by chants of “From the river to the sea.”
On the streets, a golf club in a London area with many Jewish residents was daubed with swastikas in October 2024. Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis called the Manchester attack a terrible outcome of ongoing Jew-hatred in public spaces, on campuses, and on social media. More than 520 British Jews left for Israel in 2024, up 46 percent, often citing fear.
One Manchester mother said many parents hide kippahs under hats and skip Hebrew school pick-ups. She said the daily caution is draining.
These tensions sit alongside wider national pressures. Net migration reached 728,000 in mid-2024, which strained housing, GP access, and local services. Small boat crossings rose 47 percent to 45,000 by August 2025.
In crowded Crumpsall, home to around 18,000 people, trams pass halal butchers and kosher delis. Locals talk of cultural friction. Some argue that high inflows from conflict zones import old grievances from the Middle East, which then feed local hostilities.
The Labour government, elected in July 2024 on a promise of change, faces a storm. After the attack, Prime Minister Keir Starmer left a Copenhagen summit to chair COBRA. He promised to keep Jewish communities safe and sent extra patrols to 300 synagogues.
Tighter Controls on Immigration
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said antisemitism has no place in Britain, and committed £54 million for security up to 2028. Immigration policy has proved harder to balance. Labour ended the Conservatives’ Rwanda plan, then set out a May 2025 white paper, Restoring Control.
It raised the skilled worker salary threshold to £41,700 and suspended new overseas care worker visas until 2028. At Downing Street, Starmer warned against an economy hooked on cheap labour and called for training British workers.
Rules now limit student dependants and restrict family visas for low earners, with a target of 100,000 fewer arrivals each year.
Yet many voters who asked for tighter controls feel ignored. Darren Holt, a 52-year-old builder from Oldham, said people are not bigots; they are just full. Polling shows 59 percent of people with lower formal education want numbers to fall, compared with 37 percent of graduates.
When Nigel Farage of Reform UK proposed scrapping indefinite leave to remain, so people must reapply every five years, Starmer called the idea racist and immoral. Critics say that it lumps real concerns in with the worst voices from the past. Blue Labour peer Lord Glasman called it pathetic and warned that smearing voters will only help Reform.
Farage, boosted by 670 council seats and rising polls, says Labour treats border controls as racist, and claims Reform would save taxpayers billions while not hating foreigners. At Labour’s conference in Liverpool, mutterings grew.
King and Queen Offer Sympathy
Some MPs, including Nadia Whittome, condemned what they saw as anti-migrant framing, while others worried that a shift right on borders would split the party’s base. Shabana Mahmood, the new Home Secretary, said settlement should be earned through English skills and contributions, though she avoided the racism debate.
From Diane Abbott’s 2022 charge that the system is racist by design, to today’s fights, the argument returns to a long, troubling history. Controls have roots in the 1905 Aliens Act and have often hit people of colour hardest, from Windrush to the hostile environment. Labour’s record is mixed too.
In the 1990s, New Labour ran mugs that read, Controls on Immigration. With Reform chasing a majority in 2029, Starmer’s balance looks fragile. Many people are tired of inflows near 900,000 a year and services that have not kept pace. Calling them racist feeds division and does not fix the problem.
As Manchester begins to grieve, King Charles III and Queen Camilla offered sympathy for the horrific attack. A hard question remains. Can Labour find a path that secures borders without scapegoats, and tackles hate without empty gestures? Or did the blood spilled on Yom Kippur mark the start of a darker year for Britain? The dead cannot speak, but their silence demands answers. The living need them.