Fury as UK's 'double standards' allow Palestine protests 'in response to murder of Jews'

A former Israeli envoy has condemned Britain for showing "double standards" allowing pro-Palestine protests in "response to the murder of Jews". Michal Cotler-Wunsh, a trustee in the Rabbi Sacks Legacy and former Israeli Foreign Ministry antisemitism envoy told the Daily Express antisemitism was being "endorsed top down" in the UK by government, universities and in municipal local spaces.

Ms Cotler-Wunsh comments come after a sickening antisemitic terror attack on a Manchester Synagogue which left two Jewish worshippers dead, and three people in hospital with serious injuries. Adrian Daulby, 53, and Melvin Cravitz, 66, died after Jihad Al-Shamie, 35, drove into a group of people before stabbing a man at the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue, in Manchester on Thursday. The terrorist was shot dead by police seven minutes after officers were alerted to the attack, which took place on Yom Kippur, Judaism's holiest day. Greater Manchester Police said one of the people who died suffered a gunshot wound as armed officers attempted to targer Al-Shamie during his rampage.

In uncomfortable scenes just hours after the atrocity, a so-called pro-Palestine march took place outside Downing Street, with protesters brandishing anti-Israel slogans, and one person taking part saying she "doesn't give a f*** about the Jewish community". Despite fears of more attacks on Jews in Britain, more Palestine marches are expected to take place this weekend in London.

"We've moved into a much more dangerous phase, which is the endorsement of antisemitism, top down if you will, that actually fuels the murderous events, including yesterday's, in the name of 'justice'," told the Daily Express.

"The fact there was a protest allowed, not just to issue and utter the heinous verbiage following the murderous attack on Thursday morning, but that there would be an allowance of such protests under some sort of guise of free speech, if you had actually put that through the test of any other target of hate, it wouldn't be considered free speech, not in the UK or anywhere.

"It would be considered what it is, hate speech, fighting words, incitement to violence and violence itself.

"And yet, we have seen this double-standard, including in the UK, in permitting protests of that kind in the wake of, or in response to the murder of Jews. There is this sense that it is open season... when you ask me are Jews safe anywhere? It will be the question for the UK to decide, are Jews safe here?"

Ms Cotler-Wunsh added there was a "global normalisation of antisemitism" and said it was no coincidence the murder of Jews happened just days after Sir Keir Starmer announced Britain would recognise a Palestinian state in a move that was "congratulated and supported by Hamas as the fruits of October 7".

In Israel there had been a 25-hour shut down for Yom Kippur on Thursday, as on sabbath when many refrain from use of electricity, so Ms Cotler-Wunsh said for many Jews in Israel and around the world the news of the murders was the first thing they saw on their phones as they plugged back in.

She said: "It was devastating to see, it was heart-breaking, as we ushered out Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar.

"Understanding, in the words of the late Rabbi Sacks, formerly the Chief Rabbi of the UK, that antisemitism is the most reliable sign of a major threat to humanity and freedom, and the dignity of difference, opening up our phones to the devastating news of two human beings mowed down, for the sin if you will, of praying in a house of worship, targeted for their identity, was devastating.

"And knowing there is this allowance, a permission to kill, if you come under the guise of what is now known as pro-Palestinian... and I say, over-and-over again, there is nothing pro-Palestinian about the protests that line the streets, including on Thursday in the wake of the murders.

"If you were pro-Palestinian you would be shouting in the streets to free Gaza from Hamas, to free Lebanon from Hezbollah, to free Yemen from the Houthis and to free the people of Iran from the criminal Islamic regime there... there is nothing 'pro' about these protests, it is just anti-democracy, anti-human rights, anti-West and antisemitism.

"In that sense it was heart-breaking to open up our phones and reconnect with the world after 25 hours of turning off to discover that on the holiest day of the year, Jews were murdered for practicing our faith in the UK, in 2025, in the aftermath of two years of a raging existential war right here in the state of Israel on seven fronts, with this being what I call the eighth front, with Zionism being called racism, with Israel being called an apartheid state, with the most Orwellian hijacking, redefinition, inversion of the term genocide to accuse the Jew among nations of the very crime that is perpetrated against it with intent to annihilate the state of Israel and destroy the Jewish people."