Bondi shooting trauma hits home for Jewish community in Manchester following Heaton Park synagogue attack
London: Marc Levy can feel the trauma of Australian Jews from the other side of the world – and he believes the terror attack at Bondi Beach must be a line in the sand against religious hatred.
It is barely two months since Levy spoke up for his community in Manchester, in northern England, after a terrorist rammed his car into the Heaton Park synagogue and began stabbing worshippers.
Levy can guess at the conversations Jewish Australians may be having in Sydney about whether they should leave the country.
“We want to send our love, our solidarity and support,” he tells this masthead. “We know their grief, trauma and pain.”
Levy, the chief executive of the Jewish Representative Council of Greater Manchester, hopes the Jewish community in Sydney recovers just as Heaton Park did. The synagogue did not miss a service despite the attack on Yom Kippur.
“I hope that they have the strength to continue because I know the conversations that will be taking place over dinner tables,” he says.
“People there will be questioning whether their kids have a future there, the same way that we’ve had those conversations here in the UK.
“What we’re going through is, tragically, not unique. Jews have been targeted across Europe, in America, and now in Australia, simply because they are Jews, and it’s very painful.
“We’re very good citizens. We’re loyal, we contribute an immense amount to society. And, sadly, people have been radicalised to hate us because of a conflict taking place thousands of miles away.”
Just as the assailants in Bondi chose a Jewish holy day, Hanukkah, as the date to inflict terror, the killer in Manchester, Jihad Al-Shamie, chose Yom Kippur to attack the synagogue.
Al-Shamie, who was born in Syria and given refuge in the UK, killed one man with a knife and wounded several others. He was shot dead at the scene. Another man was killed by a police bullet while attempting to hold the door of the synagogue closed to protect people inside.
‘Obscene levels of hate’
Levy says nobody in his community was surprised by the terrorist attack because they had seen an increase in hatred toward Jews over recent years.
He cites the slogan “globalise the Intifada” as an example of hate because he sees it as calling for attacks on Jewish civilians outside Israel.
‘While governments are supportive in looking to combat antisemitism, it’s a very strange world we live in at the minute where people are being radicalised in their own homes.’
Marc Levy, chief executive of the Jewish Representative Council of Greater Manchester
“We’ve had to endure obscene levels of hate crime targeting Jewish people going about their daily lives, whether that’s in schools, universities, cultural venues, workplaces, even on the streets,” he says.
“While governments are supportive in looking to combat antisemitism, it’s a very strange world we live in at the minute where people are being radicalised in their own homes.”
A generation ago, Levy says, extremists in Britain had to sign up for a newsletter to be told who to hate. Now they can be radicalised with a few clicks of a mouse and be told to pick up a knife and murder someone.
Attacks on Jews surged in Britain after the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023, and peak groups say the data shows the increase began before the Israeli government responded to the attack. The Community Security Trust, which tracks antisemitism, says the annual count rose from 1662 to 4296 attacks in the year to the end of 2023.
The Heaton Park synagogue gained enormous support after the attack. King Charles visited soon afterwards to talk to victims, as did Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his wife, Victoria. Levy praises the British Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, for the strength of her support.
However, he says political leaders and the media still need to do more to stop antisemitism.
He also worries that there is no meaningful dialogue between the Jewish community and the Muslim community in the UK to try to curb religious hatred.
“We’ve made several overtures to the Manchester mosques, who are our equivalents in the Muslim community, and they won’t meet with us because we’re Zionists,” he says.
“They’re not prepared to meet with the overwhelming majority of Jews simply because of our beliefs, instead of looking to find a way to understand where both communities are coming from so that this conflict doesn’t play out on our streets.”
Levy hopes that Australia treats the Bondi attack as a “line in the sand” so the community rejects the religious hatred that leads to terrorism.
“We need people to start listening and understanding that antisemitism is out of control,” he says.
“It’s manifesting itself right across the whole of society.
“Until government and the media and prominent people actually understand that, and seek to work so that they don’t import this conflict onto the streets, then nothing’s going to change.”
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