Rik Sherman

Dad, tax advisor, runner, cramper

[Daniel Friedman @DanFriedman81]

There was a lot of sympathy for the Palestinians in Israel during Oslo. There was a lot of desire on the Israeli side for peace and coexistence.

This is what I was taught growing up Jewish in the 90s. Peace. Concessions. The universal brotherhood of humanity. The Palestinians were clearly teaching their kids something else.

The second intifada was a stunning rebuke to Jews who had sought peace in good faith. Then the Hamas takeover and years of missiles raining down on Tel Aviv were what we got in return for giving Palestinians autonomy in Gaza.

Instead of going in there and cleaning it out, Israel built the most elaborate missile defense in the world, and the Palestinians built tunnels and made plans.

And finally, October 7 snuffed out any lingering hope that negotiations would lead to peace between our peoples. We now feel toward them similar to how they have always felt toward us.

It used to be the policy of Israel not to strike a terrorist if there were civilians in the vicinity, including the terrorist’s family. Now, that is no longer the policy. Because October 7 is the price we pay for not killing a terrorist when we have the chance, and we will not pay that price for the sake of the terrorist’s children.

The idea that has killed the hope of peace between Israel and the Palestinians is that international law prohibits the seizure of land by conquest. The Palestinians believe this is a rule that binds Israel but not them. If they win a war against Israel, the land will be theirs and there will be no one to contest their claim because they will kill all the Jews. But they know if they lose, they will be spared and they will still have the same territorial claims under international law, so they can negotiate when they are weak and then start another war when they think they are strong. The stakes of every war for Israel are existential and the stakes for Palestine are nothing. This has to end.

When you start a war and lose it, you lose something you don’t get back, and for Palestine, that means land. The 1967 borders were the basis for two state negotiations 25 years ago, and now they aren’t and never will be again. The war they started and lost will cost them some of the land.

If they want autonomy, the only way they will get it is through peaceful negotiation. If they choose violence, they will lose the war and they will lose the land.

[Rik Sherman @92_sherman]

@habibi_uk Sure you can find Mothin Ali on one of these hate fests from years gone by?

[Rik Sherman @92_sherman]

@FootballCliches Sam Matterface on Talk Sport excitedly claimed that Carrick ‘had only been in the job for 92 minutes’ in the 92nd minute of the game today. Not having that - surely he didn’t sign the deal as the game kicked off

[Rik Sherman @92_sherman]

@FootballInT80s @FootballCliches if there is a wider space between numbers on the back of a shirt than Garth Crooks’, I’d like to see it

[Rik Sherman @92_sherman]

@leviSchapiro1 @DovForman It never was. They were out on the streets on the evening of October 7th celebrating. And it’s not changed in the past 2 years

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

Four people were wounded in Manchester today - one stabbed, three mown down by a car - outside a synagogue on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish year. The attacker was shot dead by police.

The attack is the result of years in which antisemitic rhetoric has been allowed to fester and grow unchecked - on our streets, in our schools, on our campuses, across social media, and from within politics itself. It is fed every weekend by pro-Palestinian marches that exude raw Jew-hate: chants of "From the river to the sea," cries of "Khaybar, Khaybar," placards likening Israel to Nazi Germany, and the relentless drumbeat that frames the Jewish state as a genocidal pariah. Words like these do not evaporate harmlessly. They embolden. They license hatred. They teach that Jews are fair game.

The danger today was so clear that police launched Operation Plato - Britain's emergency response to marauding terror attacks. That protocol isn't triggered lightly; it exists for the nightmare scenario of roaming killers on the hunt. Police feared Jews gathering to pray might be prey. That alone should shake this country to its core.

Yet while the immediate threat was contained, the climate that produced it was built over years by cowardice and indulgence. Instead of drawing a line between legitimate criticism of Israeli policy and the demonisation of an entire people, our political class blurred it beyond recognition. The casual use of the word genocide - repeated by left-wing MPs, echoed by ministers, amplified by media desperate for moral theatre - has consequences. If you tell the public over and over that Israel is exterminating people, do not feign surprise when men with knives and cars see Jews themselves as fitting enemies.

Adding fuel is the long courtship between the Left and Islam. This isn't conspiracy; it's political fact. Since the late 1990s, when the term "Islamophobia" was engineered and pushed into policy, a shield has silenced scrutiny of Islamist ideology by branding it bigotry. Under that cover came decades of looking away - from misogyny, grooming gangs, radical preaching, and now the antisemitic undercurrents spilling out of pro-Hamas networks. Universities have become test beds for this alliance: campuses where Jewish students are isolated, abused, told to answer for Israel's existence, and abandoned by staff and unions who parrot slogans reducing a living people to a colonial sin.

All the while, British institutions have shrunk from the fight. Police look for "balance" when there is none to find. Party leaders issue tepid condemnations sandwiched between affirmations of protest. Social media companies act with speed against unfashionable speech but leave posts glorifying violence against Jews to fester. The result is a culture where hate thrives, intimidation is normalised, and knives find their mark outside a synagogue.

If this continues unchecked, Jewish life in Britain will wither. Parents will hesitate before sending children to Jewish schools. Synagogues will harden behind concrete and steel. Ordinary families will live with fear as a constant companion. And Britain itself will be diminished - because a country that cannot protect its Jews is a country that has lost its moral spine.

It's time to break with cowardice. The government must draw a clear line: protests with antisemitic chants or terror glorification are not "free speech" but incitement and must be shut down. Universities tolerating Jew-baiting should lose funding until they enforce their codes. Social media must act on the high-visibility hate they let spread. And leaders who cried "genocide" must own the permission they gave to hate.

Britain stands at a crossroads: today's blood in Manchester echoes the hate we've excused - name the antisemitism, confront it, or watch the darkness spread.

"The government must draw a clear line: protests with antisemitic chants or terror glorification are not "free speech" but incitement and must be shut down."

[Rik Sherman @92_sherman]

@CherylWroteIt @benjaminullmann familiar?

[Rik Sherman @92_sherman]

@owenjonesjourno You really are beyond help aren’t you?
The lowest of the low

[Rik Sherman @92_sherman]

@JasonReidUK ‘Present but not involved.’

[Rik Sherman @92_sherman]

@HeidiBachram There were 100 times more Palestinian flags than any other country including the Union Jack. Mostly being waved by children of course. Shmocks

[Rik Sherman @92_sherman]

@JonnyAdelman Grounds for a complaint to the club?

[Rik Sherman @92_sherman]

@mishtal Well done David 👏👏👏

[Rik Sherman @92_sherman]

@mishtal @BBCNews This is some of your best/bloodboiling work and glad to support you in putting these pieces together

[Rik Sherman @92_sherman]

@Seahawks @NFLLegacy @RSherman_25 @benjaminullmann

[Rik Sherman @92_sherman]

@HagopianAlicja @Independent @holly_evans98 Well done for siding with evil terrorism. Hope you get the help you need

[Rik Sherman @92_sherman]

@ThatsSoVillage @RobRich8

[Israel ישראל @Israel]

𝐍𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐢𝐬𝐧’𝐭 𝐚 𝐬𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐦𝐨𝐯𝐢𝐞.

This is Israel right now.

RT this so the entire world knows.

[Rik Sherman @92_sherman]

@giovannikatoman @JamieLee76

[Rik Sherman @92_sherman]

@OwenJones84 29 reported by Hamas you shmock. Also amazing that an airstrike managed to produce no dust or fire. Those Israelis really are clever.

[Rik Sherman @92_sherman]

@habibi_uk I was there at the
antisemitism march with my 7yo daughter. She didn’t notice the shouts of ‘baby killers’ and ‘fxck Israel’ luckily.

She asked me which country they were from.

I said they were British like us. She didn’t understand. Neither do I to be fair