from Religion Media Centre
The Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police, Sir Stephen Watson, has told a Policy Exchange meeting that police are receiving calls from ten year old Jewish girls requesting armed officers at Hanukkah celebrations due to the rise in antisemitism and recent attacks on Jewish communities. He said Jewish children attending school behind large fences guarded by people in yellow jackets had become normalised and fear within Jewish communities has worsened.
Things had escalated since the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 in terms of the threat posed and the perception of the threat. He said: “The terrorist threat is worse. The number of atrocities and the efficacy of those atrocities has got worse. The fear, particularly amongst our Jewish communities, has got worse.”
Manchester is home to the second largest community of Jewish people in Britain. He said there were incidents where people in Manchester were celebrating the mass shooting at Bondi Beach when 15 Jewish people were killed, which he described as “sickeningly distasteful”.
The session was entitled “The Lessons of Bondi Beach: Anti-Semitism as a National Security Threat”, and speakers discussed the continuum of antisemitism and the need to take tough action to root it out.
Recording is here