‘If you are visibly Jewish, you’re not safe’ in Britain, says chief rabbi as community reels from stabbing attack
A forensic police officers photograph the scene where two people were stabbed on Wednesday
By Issy Ronald, CNN
London (CNN) — “If you are visibly Jewish, you’re not safe” in Britain, the country’s chief rabbi said Thursday, expressing the anxiety of the British Jewish community after two men were stabbed in a London neighborhood already reeling from several recent antisemitic attacks.
“I’m sad to say that today’s event proves that if you are visibly Jewish you’re not safe, and far more needs to be done,” Ephraim Mirvis told the BBC.
“Over the past few days, people have been thinking ‘Chas Veshalom’ God forbid – where will the next one be?” he added in a post on X.
One of the Jewish victims was stabbed at a bus stop while putting on his kippah, and another was stabbed as he walked down the street in Wednesday morning’s attack in Golders Green, described by police as a terrorist incident. Both men are in a stable condition in hospital, and a 45-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of murder, police said.
The suspect was known to authorities since he had been referred to the government’s Prevent counter-extremism program in 2020, police added Thursday.
London’s Jewish community, which is concentrated in the north of the city, has been targeted by several antisemitic attacks in recent weeks. Those have included arsonists setting fire to four ambulances belonging to a Jewish charity in Golders Green last month and an attack on a synagogue two weeks ago.
Such repeated attacks led UK terrorism adviser Jonathan Hall to call this the “biggest national security emergency” facing Britain since 2017, when several terror attacks, including one targeting an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, killed 35 people.
“There are Brits, in London in particular… who are now thinking they cannot live a normal life. And it’s not one attack, it’s multiple attacks,” he told the BBC.
And local MP Sarah Sackman told BBC Newsnight that “we can’t guarantee that everybody is kept safe” even as “the threats to Jewish people in this country are very real.”
Britain’s interior minister, Shabana Mahmood, said she was treating the string of attacks like an “emergency,” though she did not go as far as characterizing the threat as a “national emergency.”
She added that claims of responsibility by a shadowy, Iranian-backed group were being investigated but that police have not yet established whether those claims are simply opportunistic or substantive.
The government announced a further £25 million ($34 million) to help fund increased security for Jewish communities, which will be centered in places like synagogues, schools and community centers. That is in addition to £33 million ($44.5 million) the government previously committed to earlier this year, according to PA Media.
In an address to the nation, Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the attacks had left Jewish people “scared to show who they are in their community,” go to a synagogue, school, university or tell colleagues their religion.
He also promised to increase policing in Jewish communities, accelerate sentencing in antisemitism cases, and said the government needs stronger powers to “tackle the malign threat posed by states like Iran.”
“We know for a fact that they want to harm British Jews,” he said.
Still, the anger among London’s Jewish community towards the government was palpable. Dozens protested against Starmer when he visited the neigborhood Thursday, while prominent journalist Ben Judah pointed to France mobilizing 10,000 troops to protect Jewish centers after the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris in 2015 as a more meaningful response.
The-CNN-Wire
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