The Facts Arrive Slowly. The Assumptions Arrive Instantly

It is always the same pattern, just with different badges pinned on.

Something happens abroad. This time it is Israel, and inevitably Netanyahu is somewhere in the frame, doing what he does. The temperature rises, the coverage ramps up, and before long we are not talking about a government thousands of miles away, but about people walking to their cars in Golders Green.

The facts arrive slowly. The assumptions arrive instantly.

That is the real story, really. Before the police have even confirmed who did what, the guesses are already in circulation. The attacker must be this sort of person, must have come from that sort of place, must fit neatly into whatever narrative the commentator already favours. If the details are not yet available, that is not because they are unknown, but because they are being hidden. It all feels very certain, very quickly.

It is a curious sort of omniscience. Accusations of concealment are made before there is anything to conceal, and when the facts do eventually emerge, any overlap with the original guess is triumphantly presented as proof. One correct detail, arrived at by assumption, is treated as validation of the entire chain of reasoning. It is rather like diagnosing an engine fault by kicking the tyre, and then claiming expertise when it later turns out the battery was flat. We have all met that sort of mechanic.

Meanwhile, the more awkward facts sit quietly in the corner. The attacker turns out to be British, which rather ruins the “were they here legally” line. There is a history of violence and mental health issues, which is less politically useful and therefore less loudly proclaimed. The attack is often described as random, which leads to the next assertion that it could have been anyone.

Not quite. In a place like Golders Green, where roughly half the local population is Jewish, “anyone” already has a strong bias. And that is before you consider the obvious. If someone travels there specifically, at a time and place where Jewish people are most visible, the odds are no longer even. They are heavily tilted. What gets described as random is often nothing of the sort. It is targeted opportunity.

And even if you accept that risk, there is an obvious limit. You cannot put a police officer beside every visibly Jewish person in Golders Green, however much people seem to think that is now the standard. The expectation quietly shifts from “reduce risk” to “eliminate it entirely”, which is not something any police force has ever managed.

And then, almost immediately, the next set of demands arrives. Ban the marches. Stop the protests. Do something, anything, visibly decisive. Fair enough, up to a point. If a protest is likely to intimidate a specific group or is deliberately positioned where people cannot reasonably avoid it, then there is a case for restricting or moving it. That applies whether it is a pro-Palestine march or a crowd gathering outside asylum accommodation. The standard ought to be the same.

But consistency only gets you so far. Not every protest carries the same risk, and not every setting is comparable. A march through a city centre is one thing. A demonstration outside a place where people live or worship is another. The principle should be applied consistently, but the judgement will not always land in the same place. Treating unlike situations as identical is not fairness, it is laziness.

And then we get the broader explanation. This is all, apparently, because of Israel. There is a link, of course there is. Conflicts involving Israel raise the temperature, sharpen rhetoric, and give people something to be angry about. That anger, however, does not travel neatly. It is redirected, usually onto whoever happens to be nearest and most identifiable. It leaks, if you like, into the wrong places.

That is where the logic fails. Anger about a foreign government is applied to a local religious minority, as though the two were interchangeable. It is not a political argument, it is a category mistake dressed up as one. The same mechanism turns Islamist terrorism into suspicion of all Muslims. Visible outliers are taken as typical, and entire groups are quietly made to carry responsibility for actions they neither chose nor control. It is an old habit, really.

There is also a slightly awkward symmetry in how this plays out. Parts of the UK Jewish press, such as The Jewish Chronicle, do often take broadly supportive positions on Israel, and outsiders frequently read that as “what British Jews think”. The optics matter, even if the reality is more varied and, if you actually read it, often more argumentative than that.

But then look at the comparison. There is a UK Muslim press - The Muslim News, 5Pillars, and others - and some of it takes strong positions on foreign policy as well. Yet it is far less visible to outsiders, far less treated as representative, and far less used as a proxy for what “Muslims think”. Same country, same behaviour, entirely different treatment. Funny that.

That contrast tells you something uncomfortable. People are not applying a consistent standard. They are responding to what is most visible, most legible, and most convenient. A handful of outlets become stand-ins for entire communities, and from there it is only a short step to treating individuals as embodiments of those imagined positions. It saves thinking, which is always attractive.

We do not apply that standard evenly. When British Muslims are treated as collectively responsible for Islamist terrorism, we call it Islamophobia, quite rightly. Yet the same reasoning is quietly accepted, even indulged, when directed the other way. It is the same error, just pointed at a different target.

The truth is more prosaic and less satisfying. There has been a run of incidents. The police have increased patrols. They cannot prevent everything. Some attacks are predictable in risk but unpredictable in timing. Sometimes a violent individual decides to act, and all the systems in the world do not quite catch him in time.

Which leaves us where we started. A man is stabbed outside a synagogue, and within minutes the conversation has drifted from what happened to who we can blame, preferably in bulk. By the time the facts arrive, most people have already decided what they think, simply waiting for something they can point to as proof.

It would be nice to think we might one day reverse that order. I would not bet on it.