The CPGB-ML condemns the murder of worshippers at the Manchester synagogue on Yom Kippur (Thursday 2 October), just as we condemn the genocide being committed by the zionist government of Israel with the full complicity of the imperialist governments of the USA and Britain.
Even if many of the worshippers at the synagogue may be supporters of the actions of the Israeli state, this in no way justifies their being targeted merely because they are jews. It is disgraceful that zionist Israel targets innocent and defenceless Palestinians, but targeting defenceless jews is equally reprehensible.
Such attacks do nothing to stop the genocide and only reinforce the misleading narrative that the conflict in the middle east is essentially religious in character, when it is actually the product of a century and more of imperialist machinations.
We note that before the British and French arrived and started interfering in the middle east, jews, christians and muslims had lived side by side for centuries in tolerance and brotherhood. Indeed, Iran remains home to the largest jewish community outside Israel in the region – a community whose rights and freedoms are zealously preserved and protected.
The jewish families whose loved ones have been killed or injured in the murderous attack in Manchester will now be experiencing the same grief that is suffered by the countless families in Gaza who have lost loved ones through endless unjust massacres. We urge them not to allow their anger to be turned on Palestinians, Arabs or muslims, but to join it to the hatred felt by the global majority for all injustice, oppression and inhumanity.
We note that the locally-raised ‘Syrian’ responsible for this attack may well be one of many British muslims who have been groomed by British and Saudi-sponsored wahabbist mosques. These institutions have been set up all over the world in order to create mercenary armies for the west’s dirty war to destroy the Syrian Arab Republic – one more genocidal campaign that was carried out in pursuit of the domination and control of middle-eastern oil.
And we note further that one of the two murdered worshippers and one of the three wounded were shot not by the attacker but by the Manchester police – who were the only ones wielding firearms, and who managed to get to the scene within an incredible seven minutes of the incident being reported.
Indeed, it seems trigger-happy police on our streets is one more repressive move by the state we can expect to see being justified by the ‘threat of islamic terrorism’ – a threat that the British imperialists themselves have created, and now use as a pretext for cracking down on all domestic dissent.
We do not yet know if any links existed between the ‘Syrian’ assailant and the British state – as they existed between the Libyan terrorists who bombed the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester and their MI6 handlers and protectors.
What we do know is that this attack comes at a time when the ruling class is working hard to create divisions between workers at home and abroad; at a time when it needs a propaganda narrative that justifies its increasingly unpopular warmongering and genocide abroad by persuading jews, christians, muslims, hindus etc to view one another as irreconcilable enemies.
Our so-called ‘Labour’ government and the entire gamut of the corporate media, just as much as Elon Musk, Tommy Robinson and Nigel Farage’s Reform, have been relentless in their promotion of divisive anti-migrant and islamophobic rhetoric. They are doing the dirty work of our ruling class, trying to keep the working people divided and trying to win at least some support amongst the masses for the serial aggressions of the US/UK/Nato/zionist war machine.
Just as workers across Europe are rising to protest against the Israeli hijacking of the humanitarian Sumud Flotilla in international waters; just as workers are feeling that they have had enough of sitting as impotent spectators to the Gaza genocide … now we have a new upsurge in propaganda aimed at dehumanising the peoples of the middle east in our eyes.
This circus of media distraction wants us to take our eyes off Gaza. It is trying to persuade us that the imperialists’ relentless and criminal war drive – from Afghanistan and Iraq to Syria and Yemen, with ethnic cleansing in Lebanon and Palestine as a constant backdrop to the whole – has all been justified because there is something inherently ‘uncivilised’ about ‘the muslims’.
Workers must reject this heinous propaganda campaign in its totality. British imperialism is in every respect responsible for all the horrific violence and sectarian division we are witnessing today, both at home and across the globe. It is a sign of the decay and decline of the British imperialist system that it is increasingly turning to fascistic measures of provocation, pogroms and repression to try to maintain social control over its own dissatisfied population.
The only way to counter and prevent such crimes as the Manchester synagogue attack is to fight racism, division and inequality in all its forms – and to organise with all our strength to stop the imperial war machine in its tracks.
We mourn with the families of all those who have lost loved ones to the forces of sectarian violence. And we reassert our deep solidarity with the Palestinian people, who have suffered a staggering 400,000-600,000 deaths in the last two years alone as the criminal zionist regime continues to carry out its horrific genocide with the full backing of our own government and ruling class.
A world of socialist equality and national harmony between workers will once and for all end this bloody spectacle. Therefore we must strive with all our might to move forward to achieve that world and to free humanity from the violence and exploitation of the present system – from poverty, inequality, racism and war.
At this time, we are reminded once again of the rallying cry of workers the world over:
Workers of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains; you have a world to win!
