After Crumpsall, can Britain ever feel safe for Jews again?

Crumpsall, of all places.

- HOWARD JACOBSON

The name means a crooked piece of land beside a river. The river is the River Irk. It seemed a peaceful suburb when I was growing up there in the Fifties, gentiles and Jews living harmoniously together. The Jewish community comprised second and third-generation refugees from the pogroms in Lithuania and Poland.

Safety was our first concern. We'd been thrown out of too many places to face being thrown out of another. We didn't lose our tempers, whatever was said to us. Just occasionally, we were irked. Now, on Yom Kippur, the quietest, most sacred and most prayerful of Jewish holy days, a terrorist has struck a synagogue, where two died and three more were wounded, before being shot dead by the police himself.

In Crumpsall! Crumpsall - far enough out of Manchester for you to fancy you can smell the Pennines. But here's a thought: is anywhere safe for Jews right now?

After the 7 October massacre, Jews were told it had nothing to do with them as Jews. Its target was settler colonialism – otherwise known as Zionism. Jews would do well, we were told, to stop “weaponising” antisemitism, which was nothing but a self-pitying concoction, a cynical ruse to forestall all criticism of Israel.