The degree of anti-Jewish violence in the UK has escalated since October, 2023, and has been especially noticeable in the last six months. Here are the antisemitic incidents that Grok describes, including the stabbing yesterday.
- 23 March 2026 – Golders Green arson: Four ambulances belonging to the Jewish volunteer medical charity Hatzola Northwest were deliberately set on fire in the car park of a synagogue in Golders Green (a major Jewish neighbourhood in north London). Police treated it as a suspected antisemitic hate crime; multiple arrests followed.
- Mid-April 2026 – Series of attempted arsons on Jewish sites in north London:
- 15 April: A brick and two bottles (believed to contain petrol) were thrown at Finchley Reform Synagogue.
- Around 17–18 April: Suspected arson attacks targeted a building in Hendon previously used by a Jewish charity and Kenton United Synagogue in Harrow (where a teenage boy reportedly smashed a window and threw a lit bottle inside).
- Late April (reported around 27 April): A suspected arson attack on a Jewish memorial wall in Golders Green.
Counter-terrorism police linked some of these to possible paid criminal actors (with speculation of Iran-related motives in some reporting) and made multiple arrests across the incidents.
- 29 April 2026 – Golders Green stabbing (ongoing investigation as of 30 April): Two Jewish men (aged 34 and 76) were stabbed in the street in Golders Green shortly after 11 a.m. Police declared it a terrorist incident, stating the suspect (a 45-year-old man arrested on suspicion of attempted murder) appeared to be “hunting for anyone visibly Jewish.” Both victims were hospitalized in stable condition. The suspect also allegedly turned the knife on officers.
This was combined with persistent accusations of antisemitism in the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn, Those accusations againt Labpir seem to have eroded under PM Keir Starmer, whose wife and family are Jewish and the kids are being raised Jewish though Starmer himself is an atheist. Yet, as the Free Press article asserts (see below), Starmer is “failing Britain’s Jews” through inaction against incidents like the ones above. First, an archived article from the Torygraph (click to read), showing journalist Suzanne Moore (not Jewish) fed up with the violence:
A few paragraphs:
I am completely broken over the stabbing of two Jewish people in Golders Green.
I should have said “the stabbing of two of our own”. I am not Jewish, but these are our people in our streets, in the city in which I live. Today’s attack is utterly shaming and enraging, and the latest in a line of appalling anti-Semitic crimes. At this point, I just don’t want to hear any more excuses about why this is happening to this tiny minority.
I don’t want to hear more about Palestine, Zionism, Netanyahu, colonialism, “mental health” or “diversity”. Where have these endless, spiralling discussions got us? We are dancing on the head of a pin about whether anti-Semitism is a form of racism, when it so obviously is.
We are now at the point where ambulances are firebombed, and the leader of the Green Party has the gall to ask whether the problem faced by the Jewish community is simply a “perception” of being unsafe. When random Jews are subject to attack, no one asks their position on the Jewish state before spilling their blood, do they? Or where they stand on Gaza?
Where I live in Hackney, east London, Hasidic Jews and Muslims live alongside each other. Many of the local Haredi schools resemble fortresses with 24-hour security. No other community is living like this. Churches and mosques do not need armed guards, and if they did, we would see this situation for what it is – a national emergency.
In the past few years, long before October 7, waves of open anti-Semitism have crashed over us. Labour twisted itself up over it, and those they expelled went straight to the Greens.
Killing Jews in their place of worship in Manchester was shocking enough, but just like the dreadful massacre in Bondi Beach, no one was really that surprised. Jews don’t stab themselves, do they? Yet there is this disgusting underlying sentiment that somehow they have always had it coming. Jews are always held somehow responsible for the murderous violence against them.
She has a point. Jews are not stabbing Palestinians, driving their cars into crowds of Arabs, or burning mosques. She calls for action, as does Jonathan Sacerdoti below, who gives a number of suggestions. And nobody asks the people who are attacked what their views are on Zionism or Netanyahu. This alone shows that it’s not Zionism or the current Israeli PM that’s prompting the violence: the target is Jews, pure and simple. As Moore says, “We need to protect each other, or we’re done for.”
The Green Party of England and Wales—it would be called “progressive Left” in the U.S.—has been accused by many, including at least two of my non-Jewish British friends (as well as by Suzanna Moore above) as being a refuge for British antisemites. One of the accused, Zack Polanski, has been leader of the Green Party for nearly a year, and happens to be Jewish, but Brendan O’Neill at the Spectator (not Jewish) calls out Polanski for weaselspeak. (Click below to read.)
Again, a few paragraphs:
Hey, Jews – have you ever considered the possibility that you’re making a fuss over nothing? That a few petrol bombs through the windows of your synagogues is not really a big deal? That your feelings of fear after two Jews were slain in Manchester on Yom Kippur and Jewish property was incinerated in Golders Green and Jews were spat at for wearing a Star of David pendant in public might be a tad overblown?
That’s what I heard when Zack Polanski wondered out loud this week if Britain’s Jews are experiencing ‘actual unsafety’ or just a ‘perception of unsafety’. It is one of the most tone-deaf, pitiless sentences I have heard a politician utter. The Jews of London were terrorised all last week. There were attempted firebombings at numerous synagogues. And here is the leader of the Green Party asking if Jews, the poor dears, merely feel unsafe. Callous doesn’t cover it.
It was an Israeli journalist who asked Polanski about the recent wave of Jewphobic violence. To be fair, Polanski, who is himself Jewish, did express concern about ‘the rise in anti-Semitic attacks’. But it felt perfunctory. He swiftly moved on to ‘the conversation’ he thinks we should be having. ‘There is a conversation to be had about whether it’s a perception of unsafety or whether it’s actual unsafety’, he said. He generously acknowledged that ‘neither are acceptable’. But there it was, out in the open, that slippery left instinct to minimise Jewish pain.
There is no other way to interpret his Kafkaesque formulation: ‘perception of unsafety’. That turgid piece of academese, which will doubtless go down a storm with the keffiyeh-wearing PhDs who swell the ranks of the Green party, seems expressly designed to downplay Jewish fear. Are you really at risk from the fire and the fists of the Jew-haters in our midst, or are you just imagining it? That was the toxic essence of Polanski’s unfeeling remarks.
. . . This isn’t all in Jews’ heads. They aren’t dumbly falling for a fear narrative. Their safety really has been compromised by the post-7 October frenzy of Jew hate. Imagine if petrol bombs were being thrown at mosques and Muslims had been murdered on Eid by a knife-wielding lowlife. Do you think Polanski would be holding forth on whether Muslims really are unsafe or are merely suffering from a ‘perception of unsafety’? Every single one of us knows he would not.
I am not keen on the word “Jewphobic” (it’s not a phobia; the word “antisemitism” will do nicely), but what’s going on in the UK is not simply a “perception of unsafety”. It is unsafety! Look at the incidents above, all of which happened in the last two months. And is being stabbed simply a “perception” of being pierced with a knife?
Finally, to Labour PM Starmer himself. Today’s Free Press has an article critical of the inaction of Labour; the author is Alex Hearn, a co-director of Labour Against Antisemitism.
The “J’accuse” paragraphs:
Within hours of the stabbing, Britain’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, called the attack “deeply concerning.” He said we must be “absolutely clear in our determination to deal with any of these offenses.” I have been a Labour Party supporter for decades and I have to say plainly: The prime minister’s platitudes are not enough. They have not been enough for some time.
This is the latest in a huge surge of antisemitic attacks in London in recent months. Only last week, a viral video circulated of an Orthodox Jewish man harassed in the street and called a baby killer. Weeks before, ambulances belonging to a Jewish charity were set on fire. Each time, the prime minister says “Antisemitism has no place in the UK,” or some similar platitude.
But a man is judged by his deeds, and unfortunately, Keir Starmer is failing British Jews. On his watch, Jews are struggling to recognize the tolerant country we once knew. As everyday racism has been accommodated and tolerated, we’re long past expecting action.
On Wednesday, Britain’s chief rabbi, Sir Ephraim Mirvis, said that “words of condemnation are no longer sufficient.” He called for “meaningful action.” The Israeli foreign ministry was even more blunt: “The UK government can no longer claim this is under control.” The Israelis are right, and they are saying what most Jews in Britain now know to be true.
Consider what British Jews have seen happen in their country in the last three years. Ever since October 7, they have watched streets close in central London, week after week, for marches characterized by racism and hate. Each time, the elimination of the world’s only Jewish state is chanted as a moral demand.
They have watched sitting members of Parliament attend those marches, where being “visibly Jewish” is deemed a provocation. They have watched as smashed windows of Jewish businesses are waved away in the pages of The Guardian as “small acts of petty symbolism.” They have seen an Israeli soccer team’s fans banned from Birmingham over concocted charges of hooliganism. They have watched students at Britain’s finest universities abuse Jewish professors and students, helping to create a culture where one in five British students said they would not house share with a Jew. They have watched parliamentary candidates campaign on Gaza, celebrating October 7. They have watched synagogues implement airport-style security, and their children required to undergo security briefings for kindergarten.
And they have watched a Labour government respond with the language of management, and with total inaction. “Concern.” “Determination.” “Resolve.” The vocabulary of bland press releases and the hope the news cycle will move on before anyone asks what, exactly, is being done to prevent the next attack.
But in the five years since Starmer took over as leader of the Labour Party and in the nearly two years since he has been prime minister, the problem has only gotten worse. Instead of just the Labour Party needing cleaning up, the entire country does. The prime minister has not summoned the heads of the universities where Jewish students have been spat at and chased. He has not used his office to name the Islamist ideology that has driven a series of recent terror plots. He has not demanded the proscription of organizations whose leaders openly celebrated October 7. He has not designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Iran’s version of the SS, as a terror group in the UK. And he cannot stop his own MPs from joining the hate rallies.
The last paragraph has a number of suggestions that Starmer could heed to lessen the antisemitism—or at least the acts that pervasive antisemitism has prompted. (I use “pervasive” antisemitism deliberately, as that’s exactly what seems to be true of the UK.) To me, some of the suggestions abrogate American-style free speech, but Britain has no First Amendment. That said, the leadership needs to cultivate a climate of tolerance, and stop having the law demonize Islamophobia but go soft on antisemitism.
Finally, this seven-minute BBC Berkshire video featuring Jonathan Sacerdoti (a pro-Jewish brodacaster) has caused a kerfuffle on social media. People object to the interviewer speaking over Sacerdoti, who ticks off a list of antisemitic incidents and criticizes Starmer for inaction. Finally, the interviewer actually mutes Sacerdoti’s microphone when he criticizes the Green Party. The man is quite eloquent, and offers tangible suggestions to erode public antisemitism, but either the broadcaster wanted to end the segment for political reasons or simply was in a rush to wrap things up. You be the judge. But muting the microphone is not the way to go. (In my view, the interviewer is pushing back not only on what Sacerdoti “characterizes” which is not a characterization but a description of reality, and also lauds the BBC’s evenhandedness, though most people recognize that the Beeb has been anti=Israel since October 7.)
As for stopping antisemitism, well, Sacerdoti’s suggestions will make public acts of antisemitism less frequent, but will it eliminate the sentiments behind them? And why is this stuff now fulminating in the UK?
Peter Boghossian has made a point … I think the excerpts are here recognize it, but I think it’s worth reading – I’ll just copy/paste it :
P.B. : “Why is it shocking? Aliens coming down in spacecraft shaped like pizzas would be shocking, but how could two Jewish men being stabbed in Golders Green possibly be shocking?
What would be shocking would be if there were not more attacks on Jews in the UK.”
4/30/26
https://x.com/peterboghossian/status/2049779312308707384?s=46
He’s pointed out this abuse of language in Anti-Semitic violence a number of times :
P.B.:”The standard use of “shocking” is surprise, disbelief, or astonishment. One is shocked when something unexpected, contrary to prior assumptions, or dramatically outside normal expectations occurs. Anyone who’s shocked by this is either a fool or a liar.”
3/24/26
https://x.com/peterboghossian/status/2036315930268148182?s=46
Suzanne Moore is fairly blunt there, but even she fails to name the actual problem. And that is massive waves of immigration of Muslims, and often the least-desirable types of Muslim from the worst countries (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Gaza, etc).
For example, the culprit in the latest stabbing of two Jews is a Muslim born in Somalia.
The Koran is full of hatred of Jews, and (in many Islamic communities) Muslim children are taught from birth to hate Jews.
Starmer and Labour won’t do anything about this because they now desperately need Muslim votes (there aren’t enough Jewish voters to worry about), just when large numbers of them are deserting Labour for Polanski’s “Green” party.
Of course the media continues to insist that the real problem we should all be concerned with is “Islamophobia” and that the real threat is the (pretty much mythical) “far right”.
They also insist that “diversity” is our “greatest strength” and that only a racist would be against ongoing mass immigration (even though third-world migrants cost the tax payer a net £10,000 a year each, and so do the second and third generations).
To illustrate the attitude of the authorities, when three Muslims drove a truck around London with a loud-speaker proclaiming “Fuck the Jews! Rape their daughters!” the police dropped all charges in the interests of “community relations”.
(Meanwhile about 12,000 British people a year are prosecuted for expressing opinions on social media that should be entirely legal.)
I would argue that these crimes are indeed being committed by the far right.
The far right is very real, unfortunately many people have the wrong idea of what it consists of.
Ah, but Judith Butler tells us,
“[I]t is extremely important to consider Hamas and Hezbollah as progressive social movements, which are on the left and part of a global left.”
It seems that Judith Butler CAN write a statement in plain English when she wants to be understood.
The Green Party are pulling off a great con. They are winning Muslim votes by taking a clear stance on Gaza and covering up their policies which would turn Muslims away such as gay marriage and full equality for women.
From the UK…
“Two Green Party candidates were arrested this morning on suspicion of stirring up racial hatred after allegedly posting anti-Semitic comments online.
The Metropolitan Police detained the two women aged 54 and 57 in London under section 19 of the Public Order Act before taking them into custody for questioning.
The posts allegedly included messages such as ‘England has a government overrepresented with Zionists Jews’ and ‘Ramming a synagogue isn’t anti-Semitism. It’s revenge.’
It comes after it was reported last week that Saiqa Ali, who is standing for the Greens in Streatham, had apologised for posts she was alleged to made.
The reports of the apology included a post of an image of an armed man wearing a Hamas headband under the phrase ‘resistance is freedom’.
It was also reported that she posted a cartoon of a girl asking her mother ‘why won’t US politicians end the Gaza holocaust?’, with the reply: ‘Because Israel is blackmailing them with the Epstein files honey’.”
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/two-green-party-candidates-are-arrested-on-suspicion-of-stirring-up-racial-hatred/ar-AA2261mh
Functional societies have way too much going on to drift into anti-Jewish rot. They build houses people can afford to live in. They lay track, repair roads, expand ports, modernise the grid, open laboratories, train engineers. Most people in society are gainfully employed, or happily retired.
Scapegoating and attacking Jewish people, by contrast, is a sign of severe rot in society.
It thrives where frustration outruns discipline, where political energy detaches itself from reality, where people lose the habit of explaining events in sober and proportionate terms. Jews become a target for anger. They are assigned powers they do not possess, intentions they do not hold, and become obsessed over in the minds of cranks and zealots. That pattern is old. It goes way back, to the mediaeval period and earlier Its persistence tells you something bleak about the people who reach for it.
An attack on Jews in Golders Green is a signal of the rot that is taking hold in Britain. Credit to: https://johnaziz.substack.com/p/the-intifada-arrives-in-london
“It thrives where frustration outruns discipline, where political energy detaches itself from reality, where people lose the habit of explaining events in sober and proportionate terms. Jews become a target for anger.”
It thrives where masses of Jew-hating Muslims reside. Simple as that. Let us not hide from the elephant in the room here.
I, too, have been reading of all these events in Britain. It’s a big concern. Even though I heard what Sacerdoti said, I have strong doubts that his suggestions can work.
Yes, the BBC has been terrible, but who will force the BBC to end its anti-Israel jihad? And while it is true that turning Jew-hatred from being fashionable to being unfashionable will help, how can that be done? (Yes, Starmer could gather university and other thought leaders together for a come-to-Jesus conversation, but does Starmer have the gravitas to be effective?)
And while police security for Jewish institutions and Jewish events will offer protection, providing such services uniquely to Jews will exacerbate the animosity, making greater and greater protection necessary.
What we’re left with is prosecuting terrorists and criminals after the fact, which we should do vigorously. Ultimately, antisemitism remains a hatred that is endemic to Europe, Great Britain, and the Middle East. Post-Holocaust guilt kept antisemitism in check, but memories are fading and the disease has come back.
Can King Charles help? Perhaps he can take antisemitism on as a cause. I’ll leave it to our British friends to comment on whether he has the moral authority to effect change.
Things seem really grim right now, with no solution in sight. Can they get worse? As the Jewish optimist says: “Of course they can!” How? More radicals can emigrate to Britain and continental Europe if they don’t get a handle on it.
Yes Norman. With European and UK shules and schools needing round the clock security, “Islamophobia” is the REAL problem.
(sigh)
In many ways the UK seems cooked.
D.A.
NYC 🗽
ps Their King is more amenable to Islam. I was hoping the White House had halal meals for him, diplomacy and all.
When politicians and media outlets soft-pedal, excuse, and/or support Muslim anti-Semitic and anti-Western extremism, it becomes normalized. We see this in Britain, and we see this in certain cities in Michigan, and now in NYC.
Whether for reasons of actual support for Islamic extremism (such as Mamdani and many of the Michigan pols) or simply because of fear of losing the Islamic and woke vote (which I believe is the case of Starmer), the future of Jews in these places looks grim indeed.
I am a Zionist; I believe that the future of the Jewish people lies in Jewish statehood. But I also believe that a throng Jewish diaspora is essential to Jewish survival in addition to being beneficial to those states in which Jews are equal citizens. And though the US and Britain’s are examples of the latter, legal equality is not worth much if the safety of Jews is in doubt. And the safety of Jews is the primary reason for Zionism, and the State of Israel’s existence.
More about the 45-year-old suspect arrested for the stabbings in Golders Green yesterday: he previously was sentenced to nine years in prison for stabbing a policeman (actually, it looks like he injured two) and a police dog: https://archive.ph/sQx57
Further details here: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/2049869287360233653.html
Astonishingly, a NINE YEAR sentence was not enough to get him sent home to Somalia.
The next one probably also won’t be enough.
For any Brits who are interested, there’s a rally against anti-Semitism in central London on 10 May. It was arranged before yesterday’s stabbings, but is more important now than ever: https://x.com/BoardofDeputies/status/2049171819031101870
Thanks for this link, Jez. I’ll make damn sure I’m there. Sickened by these attacks on Jewish people, and the moaning by the islamists about anti-Muslim hatred – belligerent self-pity indeed!
Ross
Jonathon Sacerdoti was just excellent on the opposition team with Natasha Haussdorff at the oxford union debate put-up job calling Israel an apartheid state back in December of 2024.
Can anyone name a single instance in the UK of a Jewish person attacking a Christian or Muslim simply because they are a Christian or Muslim?
If that number is zero, then the double standard here is astounding.
It also indicates a complete normalization of violence against Jews, which may be the ultimate goal of Jew-haters.
Another Jew is killed for simply being Jewish…yaaawn. Move along, nothing to see here.
Somebody mildly criticizes Islam….bigot! racism! crisis!
It appears that this is how the Left is being trained to behave by the Islamists that have infiltrated its ranks.
“Finally, the interviewer actually mutes Sacerdoti’s microphone when he criticizes the Green Party.”
The interview seemed to be going fine until he dared criticize the Green Party. It was almost if he had tripped an alarm that indicated to the interviewer to “end discussion immediately.”
The BBC seems to be ideologically compromised in the extreme on this issue.
Can we not look forward to a formal merger of the U.K. Green Party, Jeremy Corbyn’s Your Party, The CPB and SWP (together again, like Jeckyll and Hyde), and whatever party George Galloway is forming this week, plus the Stop the War Coalition? Does this amalgam leave anybody out (other than the Islamic Council of Europe, which will be only a silent partner). In the US, we do have the ANSWER coalition and its associated groupuscules, but the U.K. can boast of more garishly colorful plumage in this branch of ornithology.
70-ish years ago when my grandparents emigrated from the UK, they later told me there was “very little” antisemitism there to speak of.
How’d that change?
It changed by massive Muslim immigration, hippies adopting “Pawethtine” as pets and them teaching Middle East politics (to me, amongst others), the terrible BBC, and TikTok.
Those factors will rid any country of its “Jew problem.”
D.A.
NYC 🗽
(posted already here, my explanation of why: https://democracychronicles.org/why-is-the-media-and-mob-so-anti-israel/)
It almost gives one an insight into why more people are voting Reform in desperation.
At what point do pro-Palestine marches, protests, rallies become dangerous to society? Virtually every pro-Palestine demonstration is anti-Israel, glorifies terrorism, recommends genocide, supports Hamas, reinforces the Palestinian narrative which is usually false.
Virtually every pro-Palestine demonstration desensitizes the public toward violence with its messaging, with its social ubiquity, with its participation in social cohesion.
At what point does the preservation of freedom of speech rights (which are available to everyone, all the time, completely outside of rally venues in a million different ways) become brainwashing? How often is enough, and how often is too much – unhealthy for a society?
There have literally been multiple hundreds of pro-Palestine anti-Israel protests, demonstrations, marches, and rallies over the past three years in London alone! Every damned week. Palestinian flags and messaging fly at many other unrelated demonstrations as well.
This is a coordinated campaign, aided and funded to an untraceable extent by Islamist countries and organizations. They know exactly what they are doing, and are delighted to exploit our free speech laws to promote their anti-Western agenda. That anti-Jewish violence occurs is icing on the cake.
Life in Britain is becoming truly untenable to Jews. Some are leaving – and all of them are thinking about it. If we care about antiSemitic violence, it is time to have a real conversation about the issue, and not just chalk it up to the price of freedom of speech.
I see it as a combination of things:
1. The left’s adoption of Palestinian grievances, which implies siding against Israel
2. Massive Muslim immigration
3. The Labour Party’s desire to hold on to Muslim votes in areas traditionally Labour-voting, which now have Muslim majorities
4. Government is terrified of civil unrest along sectarian lines. Both major parties have shown they are unwilling to do anything that might “offend” Muslims, even failing to police them, or investigate the rape gang scandal
5. Sadly, under it all, there is still pure anti-semitism in the UK. Not just Muslims hating Jews, but others who hate them simply because they are Jews. It was the hatred that dare not speak its name for a long time, but now it is out and proud. And if it exists there, be sure it exists elsewhere as well. We are not as civilized as we thought.
This concatenation of factors has encouraged and emboldened the long-buried anti-semitism to show itself. Combined with the never hidden antagonism of some of the Muslim population, it is now obvious to all. All British Jews are thinking about what they shall do, and it will be an enormous loss to British life if they all decide on aliyah. The British prime minister is a weak and ineffective man, unpopular with his own back benchers (who belong to a party with a high tolerance for anti-semitism). Worse still, he is a civil rights lawyer who is convinced that human rights are the way of the future. This means the rights of minorities are to be prized over those of the majority, and he knows which minority matters most to him politically. I shall not blame the Jews of the UK if they leave, but I shall be sorry they are driven to it. I shall be sorry too, for the poorer state of my homeland, but the UK must live with the choices it has made.
I thought the broadcaster gave Sacerdoti a fair enough space to say his piece (and he did it well), so I have no problem with her. For the rest, I’m with you all the way.