A Palestinian man living in the UK has sparked widespread anger after posting a video responding to the Belfast knife attack by declaring “what goes around comes around” — framing a near-fatal assault on a local resident as karmic retribution against the British public for its government’s foreign policy.
In the clip, which has spread rapidly across social media, the bearded man films himself in a car reacting to footage of Monday night’s attack on Kinnaird Avenue, in which a Sudanese man with leave to remain in the UK pinned down a local resident and repeatedly slashed at his head, neck and face in what witnesses described as an attempted beheading. The victim survived with serious injuries. The attacker was charged with attempted murder.
The Palestinian man begins by describing the attacker as an “animal” and an “inbred piece of pig shit” before pivoting sharply to frame the assault as a form of karmic retribution against British society. He accuses the UK government of complicity in violence in Gaza, Lebanon and Sudan, saying the British public “don’t care” until violence “steps onto your own doorstep.” He describes mass immigration as forced displacement caused by Western foreign policy, saying migrants were “forced from our homes and lands because of your own governments’ actions and complicity.” He closes with a direct warning: “What goes around comes around” — and predicts things will get “much worse for us immigrants.”
The video has been met with a torrent of fury from viewers across the political spectrum. Critics were quick to point out that the victim of Monday’s attack was a random Belfast resident with no connection to any government policy decision, making the “karmic justice” framing particularly difficult to defend. Many described the response as a textbook example of victim inversion — acknowledging a violent crime while immediately redirecting moral responsibility away from the perpetrator and onto the host country.
The clip emerged as Belfast was already gripped by serious disorder in the aftermath of the attack, with homes set on fire, a bus torched and protests spreading to Glasgow, Edinburgh and Southampton. Northern Ireland First Minister Michelle O’Neill condemned the rioters as “thugs” carrying out “disgusting cowardice” while stressing that the original knife attack had itself been “heinous and wrong.”
The video has intensified an already volatile national debate about immigration, integration and public safety that exploded into view following Monday night’s events — with the Palestinian man’s comments seen by many as embodying precisely the attitudes that are driving public frustration to breaking point.
