By Howie Silbiger, Editor-in-Chief
They told us this was an isolated act. They were wrong. Manchester is not an accident or a tragic one off. It is the inevitable result of a continent that has let violent slogans seep into the streets and then pretended nothing serious would come of it. Days before worshippers were stabbed at Heaton Park, men in Germany were arrested after a weapons handover. An AK 47. A Glock. Ammunition. They were not fantasists. They were preparing to kill. That is the context. That is the threat. And that is the failure we now have to name.
You can trace the same pattern from Paris to Vienna to Rome and back to London. Police in France broke up men preparing explosives. Austrian detectives arrested a teenager plotting to blow up a major rail hub. Italian investigators dismantled a cell allegedly planning an attack on a religious festival. British counter terror teams have been active and busy. Those are not isolated headlines. They are the coordinates of one campaign. Manchester is the moment when planning crossed into slaughter.
The phrase at the center of this is brutally simple. Globalize the Intifada. Intifada means uprising. In practice it meant suicide bombings, shootings and knife attacks aimed at civilians. To globalize that idea is to export the battlefield to our cities and our houses of worship. It is not a slogan for debate. It is an instruction to violence.
On Yom Kippur a man drove into worshippers outside the synagogue and then attacked people inside with a knife. Armed officers shot and killed the attacker. But the response was not clean. Forensics now indicate that police bullets hit at least two worshippers. One of those shot later died. In trying to stop a massacre, state firearms appear to have struck the very people they were meant to save. That is a second wound layered on the first.
Within hours of the attack there were demonstrations in British cities. Organisers were asked to postpone. Many did not. At some gatherings chants calling for a global intifada were audible. People stood in Trafalgar Square and elsewhere and repeated a line that turns sympathy into strategy. That is how rhetoric becomes a manual. That is how murder moves from the margins to the map.
European leaders said the right things. Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the Manchester attack a blatant act of antisemitism and promised extra protection for Jewish communities. Ursula von der Leyen said Europe must never be a place where antisemitism thrives. Chancellor Olaf Scholz warned that those who glorify terror would face prosecution and deportation. France and Italy vowed relentless action against those who seek to import terror. Those words matter. But words are not a plan.
Because the police are not ready. Most European forces are built around public order and crime prevention. Tactical firearms teams exist but they are thin and rarely drill for coordinated attacks on crowded sacred spaces. Officers face split second choices in chaos. In Manchester they acted fast. They also appear to have fired into a terrified congregation. That is the lethal cost of improvisation.
The operational pattern is clear. Street protests normalise dangerous language. Social media amplifies it. Recruiters and radicals convert that amplified anger into logistics. Weapons are moved and handovers planned. Cells prepare. Then one of them makes the final move and we have a massacre. The arrests in Germany and the foiled plots in France Austria and Italy are warnings. Manchester is proof.
So what must be done now? First, intelligence cooperation must be relentless and continuous. Arrests in Berlin must trigger immediate follow up surveillance in Paris and Manchester. Second, police training has to be restructured so frontline officers rehearse interventions for crowded houses of worship and mixed mode attacks involving vehicles knives and small arms. Third, the law must prosecute those who make direct calls to violence. Free speech ends where explicit instruction to kill begins. Fourth, governments must resource communities to build resilience so that alienation cannot be turned into recruitment.
Some will call for tougher deportations and faster criminal proceedings. Others will warn that criminalising speech can push communities further away. Both arguments have truth. But talk alone is not a strategy. If governments clamp down only on words and ignore networks and logistics they fail. If they chase networks and allow violent rhetoric to proliferate they fail too. Prevention must be both legal and cultural.
This is not a local problem. It is a warning to every Western capital; Your synagogues schools and community centres are not fringe targets. The slogans being chanted in European streets are not harmless rhetoric. If your leaders respond only with statements and your police with improvisation then the next attack will not be someone else’s headline. It will be your city.
Act now. Train your police. Fund your intelligence. Prosecute those who issue clear and present calls to kill. Protect your communities. Because if you do not, then Manchester will cease to be a wake up call and will become the first name on a list that grows longer by the week.
Howie Silbiger is the host of The Howie Silbiger Show on Truetalkradio.com and Political Hitman on israelnewstalkradio.com. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Montreal Jewish News
