EXPERT OPINION / PERSPECTIVE -- Less than three months ago, two people were killed in a terrorist attack on Jewish people in a synagogue in Manchester, UK, on the most solemn day of the Jewish religious calendar.

Three days ago, a large crowd of Jewish people in Sydney, Australia, celebrated Hanukkah on Bondi Beach. Two Islamic terrorists, father and son, fired at them from a nearby bridge. Sixteen innocent Jewish people were murdered, including a Holocaust survivor and a ten-year-old child.

The point of a terrorist attack is that even a relatively contained engagement spreads widespread fear. This is particularly the case with the Jewish community. The background for Jews is centuries of persecution culminating in the indescribable horror of the Holocaust. Even since then Jews for many years have lived in fear.

I was friendly with an Israeli diplomat in Turkey thirty years ago. He could not travel in his own car, hopping around Istanbul instead by taxi (dangerous enough), and no one knew where he lived.

Synagogues and Jewish schools in the UK have the sort of security I was used to in Kabul. There is even a charity trust, CST, dedicated purely to the security of Jewish people here. When a terrorist incident happens, most Jews ask themselves “Are we safe here?”

So, terrorism is working well against Jewish people and western governments need to show that they are serious about opposing terrorism. You can’t have a democracy when terrorism against one community is tolerated. Not least, because assuredly if we give up on the security of Jewish people others will be next. That is why anti-semitism must be seen as a national security imperative.

When the UK united against Islamic terrorism in the aftermath of the murder of 52 Londoners in 2005, we realised that it was not enough simply to pursue possible terrorists and to be prepared for possible attacks. We realised that we needed to understand and combat the hatred that drove these attacks and to stop it infecting vulnerable people who might be tempted by the Al-Qaeda message.

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Much of the focus on the Jewish community since the Sydney attack – and it has been gratifying to see the media at last seriously focused on anti-semitism – has been about the need to “protect” Jews. That was the message of British prime minister Keir Starmer. That is fine but the solution for Jewish people, as the terrorists know, is not about even more security systems around their synagogues and schools, about armoured cars transporting schoolkids around north London or about how safe it is to be publicly identifiable as Jewish. “Safety concerns” have been used to ban an Israeli football team from playing in Birmingham, and non-political Jewish entertainers from appearing in Edinburgh. Jews are likely to conclude that this is no life, and there must be safer places to live: and you have lost your battle against terrorism.

The only solution to defeat this terror is declaring war on anti-semitism. Lots of people will tell me how difficult this would be. How do you distinguish “legitimate” criticism of Israel from criticism that uses conscious or unconscious anti-semitism? Couldn’t a state-backed campaign against anti-semitism have the opposite effect to the desired one, leading to even more isolation and hatred of the Jewish community?

These are serious risks: no one is saying this is easy. But the status quo is no longer acceptable.

One more mass casualty attack – let's say in some European or American city on Passover, 2026 – and the Jewish community is going to be packing its bags. And you have lost your battle against terrorism. Anti-semitism is a national security priority.

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Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.

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OPINION — In 2017 an Islamic suicide bomber detonated at a pop concert in Manchester, killing 22 people and injuring over a thousand others.

Now another terrorist has struck the same city, this time targeting a synagogue on the most solemn of Jewish holy days, Yom Kippur. Two people have been murdered and others are reported to be seriously injured. Police responded quickly to the incident. They killed the terrorist, who seemed to be wearing a suicide belt, within ten minutes of the incident starting.

Political leaders of all parties have denounced the terrorist act. Prime Minister Keir Starmer cut short a visit to Copenhagen so that he could get back to Britain and chair a meeting of the cross-government emergency committee, COBRA, earlier this afternoon.

Intensive police investigations have been launched. Who committed the attack? Jews have learned to fear attacks from all corners, extreme left, extreme right, extreme Islam. Manchester police said they believe the attacker is a British citizen of Syrian descent. Was anyone else involved? We gather that three arrests have been made, but how they were connected with the attack, whether there was a plot, training, funding, we do not know. It is important not to jump to conclusions before more is known. My hunch, for what it’s worth, is that the attack was not well planned or coordinated and the terrorist could have been acting alone. But we’ll see.

Disturbing questions are already being asked, however, including about British counter-terrorism policy. A central part of that policy has been counter-radicalisation, trying to offer an alternative to the “single narrative” of Muslim oppression, which underpinned Islamic extremism in the early days of Al Qaida and ISIS, and to conspiracy theories of extreme right and left. But has counter-radicalisation been successful? Some surveys of Islamic attitudes to Jews here have produced disturbing results. The British Jewish community, as elsewhere in Western Europe and North America, has seen an upsurge of violence since 7 October 2023 – not all of it Islamic: online attacks, excrement smeared on synagogues, physical attacks on Jewish people and buildings. Most Jews feel less confident here than they felt two years ago, less happy to be identifiably Jewish in public.

Prime Minister Starmer has promised more police protection for the Jewish community. “We will do everything to keep our Jewish community safe”, he said today. Fine except that anti-semites here – Islamic, far right, far left – know that that is unsustainable. Jews do not want to worship or go to school behind barbed wire with armed police round the corner. Chillingly, two non-political Jewish entertainers were prevented from appearing at the Edinburgh festival this summer because of “concerns over staff safety”. While some protective measures are appreciated, they represent a dead end for the Jewish community. Who wants this sort of life?

The only long-term hope is that attitudes towards Judaism will change. 2000 years of anti-semitism are not going to be eradicated by a government initiative. But a bolder and sustained push against anti-semitism should be seen not as a luxury. It is needed as integral to a successful, holistic counter-terrorism strategy. Terrorism cannot be defeated as long as the ideologies behind it are unchallenged.

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The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals.

Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.

Have a perspective to share based on your experience in the national security field? Send it to Editor@thecipherbrief.com for publication consideration.

Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief