Jewish Manchester leader: ‘We want environment where we don’t need more security’

A member of the management board of the Manchester Jewish Representative Council has rejected Sir Keir Starmer’s pledge of increased security for British Jews.

Nigel Tobias told Jewish News: “I suppose the promise is a good thing. But I feel slightly differently. What Sir Keir Starmer needs to do is to ensure that Jews can have less security, that they can pray the way people can go into churches and mosques. We don’t want more security — we want an environment in the UK where we don’t need more security. If he doesn’t get that message now, he’s never going to.”

Mr Tobias has a long-standing association with Heaton Park Synagogue, where his parents were members for 60 years, where he himself was bar mitzvah and married, and where the family sat shiva after his mother died. He was en route to Bowden Synagogue in south Manchester when he first heard about the terror attack.

“Without doubt,” he said, “the community generally is in shock. I don’t think we were surprised. I think this was an incident waiting to happen. I didn’t know either of the two who died very well, but I did know them.” Another Manchester Jewish activist, lawyer Daniel Berke, told JN that he considered the entire community “had lost members of their family”.

Mr Tobias added: “This government, like previous UK governments, has adopted the IHRA definition of antisemitism. One of the examples in the definition is holding the Jewish people collectively responsible for what goes on in Israel. What is going on in the UK — and I think it is inarguable — that successive moves that the government has made, have, in fact, enabled people to make Jews collectively responsible for what is happening in Israel. And therefore Jews in the UK, inadvertently or otherwise, have been put in the firing line.

“We see anti-Zionism: and they say, ‘I’m not antisemitic, I’m anti-Zionist. But it still remains the case that the majority of Jews are Zionist. Many of us — including me, and I have worked very hard for many years — also believe in a Palestinian state. But I thought Sir Keir Starmer’s decision [to recognise a Palestinian state] was at the wrong time, and the wrong place, and actually emboldened people to do the kind of things that they are doing. If you look at government institutions, universities, trade unions — motions are being passed that don’t mention Hamas or October 7. This just leads to the discourse that Jews are Zionists and Zionists are bad. So what happened yesterday was inevitable”.

The activist was speaking to Jewish News as he prepared to board a plane escorting 72 children, under the Destination Florida charity scheme, a project with which he has been involved for 25 years. Mr Tobias said: “It is my 12th trip, and I have never felt as empty in my entire life. But I have also had some wonderful messages [of support and sympathy] from my non-Jewish and Muslim friends, and I remain hopeful that things will get better”.