Nobody knows what was going through the mind of the man who slit the throats of two Jews in Manchester today and injured others.
If he were anything like the other terrorists who have wreaked havoc on our streets over the years, however, he likely carried out his crimes in the belief that he was one of the good guys.
From the Spanish Inquisition to the Holocaust, from the pogroms of Eastern Europe to the antisemitic murders and expulsions of the Middle East, the perpetrators are always convinced that they are doing God’s work, either literally or figuratively.
In this grim fact lies a lesson for us all. After two years of the most orchestrated and extensive pro-jihad propaganda operation the world has ever seen, huge numbers of people now see Israel as the bad guys and Hamas as the victims.
Who do I blame? The United Nations. The BBC and other insidious media outlets. The NGOs and international charities. The arts world. The celebrities. The social media bot farms. The universities and schools.
Everywhere, in fact, where the progressive ideology dominates. For decades, these elites have held the levers of power in our culture, cascading their fringe views on the heads of the rest of us.
In my new book, Never Again? How the West Betrayed the Jews and Itself, I describe these people as “centrist fundamentalists”. They are centrists because they view themselves as the grown-ups. And they are fundamentalists because anybody who disagrees with them is silenced with mockery and derision.
These people believe in doing down our patriotism, our history, our flag (though Labour has desperately changed its position on that recently), our traditions and our borders. Their attitude is one of “down with us and up with everyone else”.
If you have pushed the jihadist lie since Oct 7, spare me your crocodile tears today - Jake Wallis Simons
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The Jews have caught the brunt of this. Partly, it is because the Jews have not forgotten their identity, history, bonds and peoplehood, making them a living rebuke to the centrist fundamentalist. Partly, it is because the Jews are more ourselves than ourselves.
Either way, we have reached a point where our leaders more eagerly embrace those who would like to kill us than the people they are supposed to protect.
From immigration to Israel, the government invariably picks the wrong side. Our culture is committing slow suicide while self-righteously demanding that Israel commit it more quickly.
Well, Israel won’t. And nor will the Jews. But the effect of all this over the two years since October 7 is that the public has become convinced that Israel is a genocidal, apartheid, Nazi state, and Hamas are the courageous “resistance”.
You and I know that the opposite is true. Israel could have destroyed Gaza City with a single bomb, yet it sends its soldiers house-to-house at great risk to themselves. Why? Because it is not genocidal.
Israel could have starved every man, woman and child in Gaza to death within two weeks of October 7. Yet it continues to provide food to the Strip; in the last six weeks, it has provided 40 million meals. Why? Because it does not use famine as a weapon of war.
After the relentless propaganda campaign, however, instigated largely by the United Nations, most people will likely believe the very opposite of the truth. The Manchester killer almost certainly believed that, too.
What we are seeing is nothing less than the successful brainwashing of an entire society to embrace the agenda of the very jihadis who would have the West subverted and everybody who resists dead.
Keir Starmer, David Lammy and their cronies have spent the last two years directing all their condemnation at Israel, the democracy defending itself against jihad, and putting almost no pressure on Hamas, which started this war and would attack us all if it could.
That culminated in the recognition of a Palestinian state, which did not even require the release of the hostages as a condition.
In May, the UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher claimed on the BBC that “14,000 babies” would die within “48 hours” in Gaza. This claim was repeated by no fewer than 13 MPs in Parliament. When those babies did not die after all, how many of them apologised? Precious few.
Now these people have the gall to shed crocodile tears about the attack in Manchester today. They have long been part of the problem, making a whole society believe that black is white and the jihadis are the victims. Shame on them.
Never Again? How the West Betrayed the Jews and Itself, by Jake Wallis Simons, is out now
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