Here in New York, it was yet to dawn on the morning of Yom Kippur when I saw the news. My Jewish partners in my medical practice were at home observing the holiest day of the Jewish Calendar, soon to leave for their local synagogues. Schools in New York have been closed for two days to mark the Day of Atonement, the traffic on my morning commute lighter without our ubiquitous yellow school buses in our New York Streets.

As the stereotypical choreography of an alleged jihadist assault on the Heaton Park Synagogue in Manchester unfolded, I was beginning my quiet morning routine in the midst of the largest Jewish community outside of Israel.

Seeing the scenes in Manchester, my first thought was of Winston Churchill who was first elected to the Manchester North-West seat in 1906 by the people of Manchester and always credited his support to Manchester’s Jewish community. His friendship with Chaim Weizmann, a leading Zionist of his time and the first President of Israel, informed Churchill’s understanding of Zionism. Without his electorate Churchill would never have embarked on one of the most extraordinary and defining political careers of the 20th Century launching the world’s greatest nemesis of Nazism.

Churchill remained a staunch Zionist throughout his life. This history only magnifies the sorrow I feel for Manchester’s Jewish community tonight.

In March of last year (almost 80 years after Churchill and the Allies defeated Nazism), I was returning to London to present the evidence I had gathered in the immediate aftermath of October 7 at the House of Lords to both Lord Jon Mendelsohn and Lord Stuart Polak. In my decades as a human rights observer and Muslim woman combating Islamism, I was compelled to travel to the Gaza Envelope days after October 7 and document the Hamas atrocities, including examining the forensic remains of murdered Jews- the outcome of lethal genocidal Islamist antisemitism.

As I arrived from New York to stay at the Lanesborough Hotel in Mayfair, I found myself surrounded by ‘Pro-Palestinian Protestors’ almost all uniformly dressed in the de rigueur, neo-orthodox attire (sports gear, hijabs, unadorned, always-black abayas, unkempt Wahhabi beards, short trouser hemlines, white skullcaps and high-tops) favoured by young British Muslims identifying with a militant pro-Hamas sentiment.

Demonising Israel and claiming Israel waged not war but genocide was already fashionable as a militancy du jour as their chants announced. I saw more flags of Palestine than Union Jacks.

In the distance, the monotony of the Palestinian tricolour was interrupted by the occasional Soviet Sickle of communism.

As a British-American who had grown up in London over half a century earlier, I could neither recognise London nor my fellow British Muslims. When I moved through the crowds, I heard – instead of Arabic – broad, provincial British accents, yet the attire was more orthodox than the Saudi Arabians I lived among and treated in the Najd, when I had lived in Riyadh decades earlier, under then puritan Sharia Law.

As the recriminations surrounding this horrendous attack, which has now been declared an act of terrorism, begin, Prime Minister Starmer speaks of the need to dismantle antisemitism. His focus must be on Islamist antisemitism. I very much hope that term came up in the very important Cobra meeting he chaired.

This was a vile terrorist attack that attacked Jews, because they are Jews.

Antisemitism is a hatred that is rising, once again. Britain must defeat it, once again.

To every Jewish person in this country: I promise that I will do everything in my power to guarantee you the… pic.twitter.com/DAd9OaGNMc

— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) October 2, 2025

Since witnessing October 7, publishing dozens of articles and making hundreds of television appearances against a backdrop more than a decade of writing about Islamist antisemitism, both the British Parliament and American Congress have yet to hold hearings on lethal Islamist antisemitism – despite my repeated calls for such.

Muslims like me are committed to the democracies where we thrive as full citizens and are free to observe pluralistic Islam. Because of this privilege we feel deeply driven to expose Islamism’s exploitation of democracy. Yet pro-Islamist voices, protests, needs, and demands are inflated and our voices remain marginalised, silenced and excluded even as we warn of their threat.

A polarised world has spilled open, eviscerated by October 7. Mainstream media, popular culture, social media, and politicians have consciously conspired in lionising the Islamist version of the Palestinian cause. These forces choose to inflate the legitimacy of Islamist antisemitism. They rankly feed the beast of Islamist antisemitism. All the while they massage their own egos enthralled with their own ‘humanitarianism’ – announcing with fanfare the arrival of a stillborn Palestinian Statehood without moving the needle for Gazans or the wider Palestinian people let alone addressing the Islamist terror military holding both millions of Palestinians and both Jewish hostages and the entire Jewish people captive to Hamas’s dually genocidal war.

Instead of a moment of reflection to acknowledge the destruction this has wrought on our own societies, there has been only an obscenely self-indulgent, grotesque and insatiable relish for the demonisation and delegitimisation of the Jewish State. The appetite to demonise Israel is bottomless: demonisation both at the expense of the Jewish State, the Jewish people and the Palestinian people themselves.

Today, the blood of British Jews that was spilled in Manchester stains all of us in our collective guilt.

We have allowed this popular culture to grow and overshadow all that is good and decent. Bloodthirsty Islamist rhetoric has been cultivated, celebrated, feted and escalated; demonisation of Israel, dehumanisation of the Jew, de-legitimisation of Jewish Statehood and sovereignty is now a global Olympic-level bloodsport.

Our politicians have worshipped at an altar which continues to feed Islamist antisemitism. Even now, in the hours after Jews were killed at a Manchester Synagogue, the pro-Palestinian protesters were permitted to march.

Why was this permitted? Why was this tolerated?

I have been active in a number of forums on contemporary antisemitism sounding the alarm on Islamist antisemitism. It is lonely work. Most experts who work in the antisemitism space cannot begin to hold discussions on Islamist antisemitism because of fears of Islamophobia, but more commonly an incredible blind spot which allows only right-wing Neo-Nazi antisemitism to penetrate, failing to understand Islamism is the ultimate right-wing fascist totalitarianism which has skilfully parasitised left-wing authoritarianism and, of late, has in fact cannibalised left-wing authoritarianism since October 7.

As the Greater Manchester and Metropolitan Police begin the work of understanding who murdered Jews worshipping on Yom Kippur, every political and religious leader in Britain must acknowledge, more generally, that Islamist antisemitism has become mainstream in Britain. Islamist antisemitism has been enormously empowered by fatuous, self-indulgent, and deeply destabilising protest culture now seemingly part of the daily fabric of British life.

Protests must be looked at as instruments of radicalisation and the unravelling of democracy and no mere ‘peaceful assembly’ and ‘democratic expression’.

Richard Watson documented the agonising and longstanding denial by British intelligence services which watched but fail to intervene on the rise of British Islamist jihadists in Britain leading to the catastrophic loss of life in the 7/7 bombings. The same kind of neglect has been at work in the face of patently radicalising Islamist antisemitism on the streets of Britain.

Tackling Islamist antisemitism begins with holding parliamentary hearings in Westminster and Congressional Hearings on Capitol Hill. It begins with empowering voices which understand both Islam and Islamism – including Muslim voices like mine – and do not fear exposing the radicalising forces at work both inside Muslim communities and also within our media.

There is no dismantling this lethal genocidal threat without a serious reformation of the 24/7 mediated demonisation of Israel the absolutely antisemitic and dehumanising portrayal of the Israel-Palestine conflict which has radicalised generations globally, inspired a call for Global Intifada and fails to demand consequences for Big Tech Platforms which are collaborators in propagating radicalising sentiments, ideas and demonisation of Jews at a speed and pace never before seen in history.

No Islamist jihadist attack begins in a vacuum. Radicalisation begins with the legitimisation of nonviolent Islamism which has become mainstream and celebrated. This has to stop. It imperils all of us.

There is a laziness I sense underpinning Islamist antisemitism. A vague unspoken hope that somehow it will all go away. We need only to achieve a resolution in Gaza that will end this sentiment. Those lazy thinkers are both foolish and wishful. Islamist antisemitism is a hatred that will not be sated. Unopposed it will only magnify. Hide from it and it will submerge you.

If we fail to do any part of this, we will have no democracy left to save. Liberal democracies are only functional when they save the most vulnerable and least enfranchised among us. If we cannot protect the Jewish people – and clearly at the moment we cannot – we are left not with a democracy but the tyranny of an emboldened, Islamist sympathising majority.

Jews in the West are no longer safeguarded by our own democracies. Instead, they lead lives here knowing they must face lethal Islamist antisemitism alone. That we lost British Jews from Manchester which gave the world the legacy of Churchill and defeat of Nazism is beyond heartbreaking, it is enraging.

Islamist antisemitism is a menace that claims lives and at present circulates unfettered and without challenge in Britain. Worse, Islamist antisemitism has been made a cultural darling. Failing to confront it and dismantle Islamist antisemitism is the single most important work of our time. We must face it. This is no less than our Churchill moment. Defeat it we must. The alternative is too grim to bear.