The brutal attack on Yom Kippur at the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation in Manchester, England-where two Jews were murdered by a terrorist shouting pro-Palestinian slogans-should have been a watershed moment for the Western world. It should have sparked an honest reckoning about how violent antisemitism has been rekindled in the public sphere under the guise of political activism. Yet, despite the horror and condemnation from figures like British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, the underlying cause of such violence remains largely unaddressed: the steady mainstreaming of anti-Israel propaganda and the normalization of antisemitic rhetoric cloaked in the language of “human rights” and “liberation.”

The attack in Manchester was not an isolated event. It was the tragic outcome of an environment that has been poisoned for nearly two years-since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 massacre of 1,200 Israelis-by relentless propaganda, disinformation, and hate campaigns. These campaigns, broadcast across Western media and chanted in city streets and college campuses, have transformed slogans like “From the river to the sea” and “Globalize the intifada” into rallying cries for those who justify or excuse the targeting of Jews worldwide.

The Manchester assailant, 35-year-old British citizen of Syrian descent Jihad al-Shamie, was reportedly assisted by several accomplices in an attack that combined vehicular assault with stabbing-methods that have become all too familiar in the lexicon of Islamist terrorism. While investigators may take time to uncover his personal motives, one does not need to be a detective to recognize the ideological soil from which this violence grew. Across Britain, week after week, massive protests have filled the streets of London, Manchester, and Birmingham, with demonstrators chanting openly genocidal slogans against Jews under the banner of “Free Palestine.”

These are not expressions of solidarity with civilians in Gaza, nor are they appeals for peace. The chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” explicitly calls for the eradication of Israel and, by extension, the destruction of the Jewish population that lives there. Similarly, the call to “globalize the intifada” is not a call for justice-it is a call for global terror, for the spread of the same kind of violence that took place in Manchester to Jewish communities everywhere.

The last two years have seen a frightening increase in attacks inspired by these slogans. In the United States, two Israeli embassy staffers were shot dead in Washington, DC. A Holocaust survivor, aged 82, was killed in Colorado when a march for Israeli hostages was firebombed. During Passover, Pennsylvania’s Governor Josh Shapiro-a proud Jewish politician-saw his home targeted by arson. The perpetrators in each of these cases invoked “Free Palestine” as their justification, echoing the same slogans now echoed in Western capitals and classrooms.

To understand the scale of moral inversion occurring today, one must look at how the term “genocide” has been weaponized. Since the October 7 massacre, mainstream media outlets, international organizations, and activists have routinely accused Israel of committing “genocide” in Gaza. This charge-absurd, malicious, and historically illiterate-represents not just bias but a deliberate distortion of truth designed to delegitimize Israel’s right to defend itself against a terrorist group that deliberately uses civilians as human shields.

The use of the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s military actions is not merely false-it is an inversion of reality. Hamas’s stated goal is the extermination of Jews, as expressed clearly in its founding charter and repeated in its public statements. Israel’s military, by contrast, takes extensive measures to minimize civilian casualties, even at the cost of tactical disadvantage. Yet, under the influence of propagandists and sympathetic journalists, this complex reality is flattened into a grotesque caricature of “oppressor versus victim.”

This blood libel-the accusation that Jews are collectively guilty of monstrous crimes-is not new. It echoes the medieval myths that Jews murdered Christian children to use their blood in rituals. The modern version accuses the Jewish state of deliberately murdering Palestinians. Both versions serve the same function: to morally isolate Jews, to justify hatred and violence against them, and to portray them as subhuman villains who deserve destruction.

When international media outlets print or broadcast these accusations as if they were established fact, they do not merely inform-they incite. Every time a headline uncritically repeats Hamas’s casualty claims without noting that the group manipulates those numbers, or when a news anchor describes Gaza as a site of “genocide,” the groundwork is laid for another Manchester, another Washington, another Boulder.

Defenders of such rhetoric insist they are merely “criticizing Israeli policy.” But this claim collapses under scrutiny. Criticism is a normal and necessary part of democratic discourse; calls for the destruction of a sovereign state and its people are not. When demonstrators wave banners depicting Israelis as Nazis, or when social media posts celebrate the murder of Israeli civilians as “resistance,” this is not criticism-it is antisemitic dehumanization.

The idea that hatred of Israel can be neatly separated from hatred of Jews has been repeatedly disproven by the actions of those who claim to hold such distinctions. When synagogues are attacked, when Jewish students are assaulted on campuses, when Jewish-owned businesses are vandalized, it is not because of Israeli policies-it is because antisemites, emboldened by the normalization of such rhetoric, feel licensed to act.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s condemnation of the Manchester synagogue attack was swift-but hollow. It rings false because his government’s policies have contributed to the very environment that enables such attacks. In recognizing Palestinian statehood unilaterally, alongside France, Canada, and Australia, the United Kingdom rewarded a Palestinian leadership that has not renounced terrorism, released hostages, or accepted Israel’s right to exist.

This diplomatic gesture, presented as a move for “peace,” was in reality an act of appeasement-one that signals to Hamas and its global supporters that terrorism yields political rewards. It also undermines Israel’s legitimate right to eliminate a group that murdered over a thousand of its citizens in the most barbaric assault since the Holocaust.

By prioritizing the appeasement of domestic constituencies-left-wing activists and Islamist groups who view Israel’s existence as intolerable-over moral clarity, Western leaders like Starmer send a dangerous message: that Jewish lives and Israeli self-defense are expendable in the name of political expediency.

Much of the blame lies with Western media, whose coverage has transformed Hamas talking points into accepted wisdom. Prestigious outlets routinely publish unverified claims from Gaza without scrutiny while casting doubt on Israeli sources, even when evidence supports them. Opinion pages and television panels host activists who describe Hamas as “freedom fighters” and accuse Israel of “ethnic cleansing,” while dismissing Jewish concerns about antisemitism as paranoia or deflection.

This normalization of antisemitic narratives has made it socially acceptable to express Jew-hatred in the language of social justice. “Anti-Zionism” has become a moral shield for bigotry, allowing individuals and institutions to traffic in hatred while claiming the mantle of virtue.

The attack in Manchester should have forced a reckoning. Instead, it has been folded into the same cycle of condemnation without consequence. The world wrings its hands, declares its sorrow, and moves on-without confronting the ideology that fuels such crimes.

Until governments, media, and civil society acknowledge that antisemitic violence does not emerge from a vacuum-that it is cultivated through years of propaganda, slogans, and “activism” that dehumanize Jews-the bloodshed will not stop.

The call to “globalize the intifada” is not a metaphor. It is a program of action, one whose implications have already been realized on the streets of Manchester, Washington, and beyond. Those who chant it, print it, or excuse it share responsibility for the terror it inspires.

As long as the world tolerates this moral inversion-where terrorists are framed as victims and Jews as villains-the tragedies will continue. And each drop of Jewish blood spilled will stain not only the hands of the murderers but also those of the journalists, politicians, and activists who helped make their hate respectable.

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