Britain faces a dangerous rise in anti-Jewish violence and must get real about its implications
The stabbing of two Jewish people on the streets of Golders Green, we must mournfully accept, is very far from being an isolated incident. Last year, Jewish people were stabbed outside a synagogue in Manchester. In March, volunteer-led ambulances run by the Jewish community were burned in north London. This year, two men were convicted of plotting what the police called “an Islamic State-inspired terrorist attack on Jewish communities … which aimed to kill hundreds of innocent people”.
There have been all kinds of intimidating incidents in recent months. A random Jewish man in Slough was cornered and threatened for being a “baby killer”. A social media influencer was filmed goading Jewish people (including a polite Jewish person with Down’s syndrome) by dropping coins beside them and asking if they dropped their money.
There are commonalities here. All the perpetrators or suspects in these cases were immigrants or descended from immigrants. The man suspected of stabbing people in Golders Green was born in Somalia. The man who stabbed Jewish people in Manchester was born in Syria. The suspects in the ambulance-burning case are Hamza Iqbal, Rehan Khan and Judex Atshatshi. The men convicted of plotting an ISIS-style attack were called Walid Saadaoui and Amar Hussein.
Of course, native Britons can be very much antisemitic too. The Community Security Trust reports that half of the alleged perpetrators in antisemitic incidents in 2025 were reported as being white British people. But perpetrators from ethnic minorities are still very much overrepresented — and especially when it comes to incidents of sensational violence.
Polling has suggested that Muslims in Britain are many times more likely to express an unfavourable opinion of Jews than non-Muslims in Britain
This is simply no surprise when we consider the political and cultural climate they have grown up in. Polling has suggested that Muslims in Britain are many times more likely to express an unfavourable opinion of Jews than non-Muslims in Britain. They are also very much more liable to feel passionately about the war in Israel and Palestine, which, in a mind packed with explosive antisemitism, can be the spark that leads to detonation.
Arguments about what constitutes legitimate and illegitimate speech around Israel are almost beside the point. Walid Saadaoui and Amar Hussein were not reading opinion pieces in the Guardian. Still, political correctness has made left-wing figures quite uneasy about addressing antisemitism. Last month, Zack Polanski of the Greens said:
We know that increasingly Jewish communities are feeling unsafe. There’s a conversation to be had about whether it’s a perception of unsafety or whether it’s actual unsafety …
To be clear, I don’t think it is at all improper to discuss the extent to which it is rational or irrational for anyone to feel less safe. Yet to suggest that feeling less safe amid successful and thwarted terror plots could be wholly reducible to “perception” seemed remarkably presumptuous — and looks a lot worse when just days later we see another act of antisemitic terrorism.
A left-wing inability to take violent crime and terrorism seriously was also evident in commentators who were less outraged by Jewish people being stabbed than by the apparent perpetrator being kicked in the head by police officers who were attempting to disarm him. “Contemptible abuse of police power,” said Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu, “Disgusting.” “This is outrageous,” snarls the author John Wight, “Who do they think they are: members of the IDF?” Our old friend Zack Polanski joined the fun, reposting a tweet that said: “So essentially … officers were repeatedly and violently kicking a mentally ill man in the head when he was already incapacitated by taser.”
I can understand taking police violence seriously. But I can’t emphasise this enough: he had stabbed two people and he was still holding a knife. The police cannot be expected to stand back and assess the effectiveness of neuromuscular incapacitation when a murderous person is still armed. Commentators who believe in borders lax enough to allow in all kinds of grievance-maddened terrorists while demanding that the police have the restraint of angels have to be among the most infuriating.
Debate has returned to whether the government should ban pro-Palestine marches. It should not. People in Britain should still have the right to the freedom of speech and the freedom of assembly — not least when it comes to registering their opposition to war. What politicians should do, above everything else, is keep out — and, in the case of non-citizens, remove — dangerous people who intimidate and attack Britons. There is no point in chin-stroking debates about people being allowed to say “globalise the intifada” while the men pursuing intifada are being globalised.
