By Marissa Davison and Ben Makori
LONDON, April 30 (Reuters) – Scared, angry at the government, and wondering whether they need to leave the country, British Jews in the north London suburb of Golders Green were reeling a day after an attacker stabbed two men in the street.
Members of the Jewish community said they were looking for Prime Minister Keir Starmer to show he can address the root causes of increasingly frequent antisemitic attacks and keep them safe.
“People are really concerned, people are afraid, people are uncomfortable walking in the street, people are blaming obviously the government for not doing anything about what’s going on,” Shilome Rand, one of the men stabbed on Wednesday, told ITV News. Both victims are in a stable condition.
Wednesday’s stabbing was the most serious and violent in a spate of recent attacks aimed at Jews in London, and comes less than a year after a deadly attack at a synagogue in Manchester.
Starmer, whose wife is Jewish, has pledged more funding for community policing organisations, including the one that helped stop Wednesday’s knifeman, and has promised legislation to stop “malign state actors” hiring proxies to conduct attacks.
“We must absolutely deal with the root causes of both antisemitism and extremism,” Starmer said as he held a meeting with criminal justice agencies.
NEW ATTACK, OLD RESPONSE
For some, the official response felt all too familiar.
A Jewish News digital front page decried what it called a “Bull$#@# Bingo” response, declaring “Jews Bleed. Cue the cliche” above a list of statements of solidarity commonly used by politicians.
The local lawmaker and chief of London’s police force were both heckled as they spoke to media on Wednesday.
“Are the government going to do anything meaningful? Well, let’s wait and see. Don’t hold your breath,” solicitor David Pearl, 69, told Reuters on Thursday morning.
He said he wanted to leave Britain but his children did not. “I don’t feel safe anymore.”
Calev Swabel, a 21-year-old intern, said he understood the sentiment.
“I love England. I’m a proud British Jew and a Jewish Brit, but it really does worry me. (That’s) something that I’ve never felt before,” he told Reuters.
POLITICAL DIMENSION
The incident comes ahead of local-government elections on May 7 in which Starmer’s Labour Party are expected to suffer heavy losses, in part due to a perception that they have failed to achieve much for the centrists who backed them in July 2024 and also alienated many on the party’s traditional left wing.
Starmer visited the area on Thursday, where his arrival was greeted by a small group of protesters shouting “shame on you”. His opponents have also been quick to go to the scene and amplify the message that the government is not doing enough.
The opposition Conservative Party leader, Kemi Badenoch, was there within hours, calling antisemitism a “national emergency”.
Reform UK Leader Nigel Farage visited on Thursday, saying the interests of British Jews had been overlooked in order not to upset parts of Labour’s voter base, drawing a direct line between left-wing anti-Israel protests and rising antisemitism.
“There’s a feeling that we’ve been appeasing or pandering a segment of the population for electoral purposes, rather than standing up for what’s right,” he told reporters.
Interior minister Shabana Mahmood acknowledged the intensity and scale of pro-Palestinian protests had put pressure on the Jewish community, but said the government had sought to limit them.
She said it was up to all faiths and viewpoints to speak out against antisemitism.
“When I take the stand that I am taking against antisemitism, I am doing so as a practising Muslim. It is absolutely in line with my faith,” she told BBC radio.
“What I want for all of our citizens, our Jewish citizens, and Muslim and others, is safety and security and the freedom of this land.”
(Reporting by Marissa Davison and Ben Makori, additional reporting by Muvija M, writing by William James; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
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