British Prime Minister Keir Starmer got it right.
“There’s no getting away from the fact that this was not a one-off,” he said shortly after two Jewish men were stabbed in broad daylight in London’s heavily Jewish Golders Green district on April 28. “There has been a series of attacks on our Jewish community, particularly in recent weeks, and there is a very deep sense of anxiety, of concern about security, about safety …”
Essa Suleiman, a 45-year-old British citizen of Somali Muslim descent, is regarded as the chief suspect. Arrested and charged with two counts of attempted murder, he is suspected of attacking Shloime Rand, 34, and Moishe Shine, 76.
Suleiman, who has a record of mental problems, is known to police. In 2008, he was imprisoned for stabbing a police officer during a violent altercation.
Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiyya, a shadowy Islamist group known as the Islamic Movement of the Companions of the Right, claims it orchestrated the London stabbings. In addition, it has taken responsibility for about a dozen antisemitic attacks across Europe, including Greece, Belgium and the Netherlands. Closely aligned with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, it emerged this past March.
At present, London’s Metropolitan Police Service and counterterrorism officials are investigating whether it is linked to Iran, or whether these criminal acts were carried out by malign forces using crude, low-cost methods to sow fear in European Jewish communities.
The police commissioner, Mark Rowley, said that “some individuals are being encouraged, persuaded, or paid to commit acts of violence on behalf of foreign organizations and hostile states.”
Claiming that British Jews face their greatest ever threat, he said that they are on the “hate” list of every racist and extremist group, and charged that social media is generating an “epidemic” of antisemitism. He called for the deployment of 300 armed officers to protect the community.
Antisemitic incidents in Britain reached a near-record high level in 2025, with 3,700 incidents having been recorded. This was a 4 percent increase over 2024 and the second-highest annual total since 2023, when 4,298 incidents were reported.
London, which is home to about half of Britain’s approximately 280,000 Jews, has borne the brunt of many recent antisemitic incidents.
On March 23, four ambulances from a Jewish charity were set on fire outside a synagogue, causing more than $1 million in damages. Last week, four men from London between the ages of ages 17 to 20 appeared in court, charged with arson. They go on trial in 2027.
Last month, the Finchley Reform Synagogue and the Kenton United Synagogue were firebombed by arsonists. Seven months ago, a synagogue in Manchester was attacked, resulting in the deaths of two people.
In recent weeks, 28 people have been arrested in connection with a series of attacks. Eight have been charged with arson-related offences.
According to Rowley, there has been “a rise in racist and antisemitic hate crime.” The government’s adviser on terrorism, Jonathan Hall, told the BBC that the spate of anti-Jewish incidents constitute the “biggest national security emergency” in Britain in almost a decade.
The leader of the opposition Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch, has described the antisemitic attacks as a “national emergency.”
The Reform Party’s leader, Nigel Farage, claims that the safety of British Jews has been overlooked in the interest of appeasing the voter base of the Labour Party, which is headed by Starmer. “There’s a feeling that we’ve been pandering to a segment of the population for electoral purposes, rather than standing up for what’s right,” he told reporters.
With this accusatory comment, Farage linked rising antisemitism with anti-Israel protests organized by left-wing activists and Palestinians.
The minister of interior, Shabana Mahmood, has acknowledged that the scale and intensity of pro-Palestinian protests since Hamas’ attack against Israel on October 7, 2023 has exerted pressure on the Jewish community. She claimed that the government has tried to limit such demonstrations.
In the wake of last month’s stabbings in London, Starmer, a former human rights lawyer whose wife is Jewish, adopted a hard line toward Palestinians and their supporters who trot out the phrase “globalize the intifada.” Saying they should be prosecuted, he equated this chant with antisemitic terrorism.
“Of course, we protect freedom of speech and peaceful protest in this country,” he added. “But if you are marching with people wearing pictures of paragliders without calling it out, you are venerating the murder of Jews. If you stand alongside people who say globalize the intifada, you are calling for terrorism against Jews. People who use that phrase should be prosecuted.”
Although Starmer has unequivocally condemned the antisemitic violence, critics think he has not gone far enough.
As Alex Hearn, a director of Labour Against Antisemitism and a vocal defender of Israel, wrote, “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.
“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 (Palestinian) 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.”
“The prime minister’s insistence that there is ‘no place for antisemitism’ rings hollow in a place where antisemitism has already found a home.”
