Manchester synagogue rabbi ‘laughed off’ death threat before terror attack

Manchester Rabbi Daniel Walker has revealed that he received a death threat a few weeks before his synagogue was attacked by an Islamist terrorist and now has security guards to keep him safe. 

The rabbi spoke movingly about how he was ‘shocked but not surprised’ by the attack by last month.

Worshippers Adrian Daulby, 53, and Melvin Cravitz, 66, died after Jihad Al-Shamie smashed into the synagogue gates in his car and then started stabbing people while wearing a fake suicide vest.

Mr Daulby is thought to have been inadvertently shot dead by armed police as they tried to stop Al-Shamie.

‘I didn’t really think something like this could happen,’ said Rabbi Walker who was speaking on a panel alongside former Prime Minister Boris Johnson at a European Jewish Association conference on antisemitism in Krakow, Poland. ‘But on the other hand, the reason why so many lives were saved that day is because of the security infrastructure in place because we were worried that it was going got happen.

‘I think we are all saying we were shocked. We weren’t surprised. We live behind gates. Our kids, our schools are behind gates. The security guards are everywhere. I personally have security guards at the moment because, yes, we are worried and we were worried.’

Rabbi Walker said that just a few months before the attack he received a death threat on his telephone: ‘There was a message left on my machine telling me to get out of Manchester, they don’t like my type around here, I support genocide.’ I laughed it off. I am not laughing anymore.’

The rabbi said similar language was used by Al-Shamie on the day of the horror attack.

We have to get back to Jewish life. We are surrounded by the police who are immensely supportive and the CST. We are being made to feel safe. But the truth is this isn’t a sustainable response in the long term

‘When our attacker stood on the steps looking at us through the window, he shouted, ‘They are killing our kids’. And the first thing that occurs to me was the ridiculousness of suggesting that two of nicest people you are ever going to meet would ever harm a fly, let alone kill anyone’s kids. They were the loveliest, most wonderful people.

‘But this accusation is on every Jew in the world, that we are somehow collectively killing kids.’

While the community in Manchester now has armed guards, Robbi Walker said that wasn’t a ’sustainable’ response – and that more needed to be done to tackle antisemitism.

‘We have to be made to feel safer. We have to get back to Jewish life. We are surrounded by the police who are immensely supportive and the CSTe are being made to feel safe. But the truth is this isn’t a sustainable response in the long term.

‘There has to be some tackling of the source of this; someone didn’t wake up one morning and decide to attack my synagogue, kill my friends.

‘He was born in an atmosphere of hate and we have to find a way of challenging that. We have to acknowledge that the root of the hate is in the demonisation of Jews. We have to challenge that language, to make political points reasonably without inserting hate and discrimination.’

Rabbi Walker spoke movingly about how his daughter was still traumatised by the attack and had asked him to stop reading newspapers as she could see that he was getting upset.

‘She asked when life was going to go back to normal but her normal isn’t good enough either,’ he says. ‘I don’t want my daughter to have to go to school behind big gate and with guns outside. It’s not OK. She might be used to it but I refuse to get used to. Our lived experience is that it hasn’t been taken seriously enough. It sometimes it feels to me as if it’s the only racism which is OK – when you have people screaming the most vicious chants and they are broadcast, when you have antisemitic medics in the NHS and there’s no sanction.’

Mr Johnson revealed his shock on the panel about the rise in antisemitism in the UK saying: ‘A false equivalence has been allowed to take root between Hamas and Israel which is nonsense. We have to deal with the root causes of this, which is the legitimisation of antisemitic expression. It is up to politicians to call this out.’