Murder in Manchester
Synagogue attack on Yom Kippur leaves two dead and several injured — a brutal reminder that antisemitism remains the world’s oldest, ugliest hatred.
Isn’t it strange—no, bizarre—that in a world of eight billion people, with thousands of cultures, religions, and ideologies, there always seems to be one group that ends up in the crosshairs like clockwork: the Jews. Left, right, religious, secular, autocrats, anarchists—everyone eventually seems to warm up to the old pastime of blaming Jews for everything from plagues to inflation to why your sourdough starter failed.
The attack at the Manchester synagogue is only the latest grim entry in a centuries-long list of “let’s pick on the Jews” events. Two people dead on Yom Kippur—Yom Kippur, of all days, the holiest and most introspective moment of the Jewish year. While Jews around the world were fasting, praying, and reflecting on their shortcomings, someone decided this was the perfect time to ram a car into worshippers and start stabbing. Because obviously, if there’s trouble in the world, it must be their fault.
You’d think after 3,000 years, humanity might find a new scapegoat. There are plenty of candidates! Billionaires who launch vanity rockets. Dictators with questionable fashion sense. Tech bros trying to upload consciousness into a toaster. But no—history returns to the Jews like a bad sitcom reboot no one asked for.
The right blames Jews for globalism, media control, and liberal decadence. The left blames Jews for colonialism, capitalism, and apparently the weather. Conspiracy theorists accuse Jews of simultaneously running Hollywood and the banks — an impressive feat of multitasking if it were true. And in the middle of this nonsense, Jewish communities quietly try to live, work, pray, and send their kids to school without armed guards at the door.
What’s truly grotesque is how both extremes find reasons to hate Jews that completely contradict each other. Jews are accused of being both stateless outsiders and sinister nationalists. They’re capitalist overlords and liberal infiltrators. They’re too powerful and simultaneously too weak. It’s as if humanity has taken all its paranoia, put it in a blender, and poured it over one tiny population that makes up less than 0.2% of the world.
The Manchester attack isn’t isolated; it’s part of a pattern. Synagogues need metal detectors; Jewish schools need armed patrols. Political rallies twist Jewish identity into a prop. Online, antisemitic memes circulate with all the subtlety of a jackhammer. And yet, somehow, the world acts surprised every single time violence happens.
What makes it even more infuriating is the sheer stupidity of it all. As if, by removing Jews from the world, all of humanity’s problems would magically vanish. Climate change? Solved. Traffic? Gone. World hunger? Poof. What a bunch of morons. The world’s most enduring prejudice is also its laziest.
The truth is this: antisemitism persists not because Jews secretly run the world, but because blaming them is easy. It’s easier than looking in the mirror. It’s easier than fixing broken systems. It’s easier than admitting that evil doesn’t need a Star of David—it just needs a willing crowd and someone to point the finger.
And so, the cycle spins again. Left, right, religious, secular—they all find their way back to the same tired script. History’s most dangerous rerun.