![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-2273236265-scaled-e1777554963801.avif\")
<\/a><\/p>\nHome Secretary Shabana Mahmood, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley speak with members of the Jewish community during a visit to Golders Green on April 30, 2026 in London.(Stefan Rousseau – WPA Pool\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The announcement came a day after a stabbing in the Orthodox neighborhood of Golders Green left two men injured and a community reeling. The stabbing has been ruled a terrorist attack.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no getting away from the fact that this was not a one-off,\u201d Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who visited the neighborhood on Thursday, said during a press conference. \u201cThis 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, about identity frankly.\u201d<\/p>\n
A new group called Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya, or the Islamic Movement of the People of the Right Hand, that has claimed attacks on Jewish targets across Europe said it was responsible for the stabbing. British officials said they were investigating that claim.<\/p>\n
They disclosed that the 45-year-old man arrested in the stabbing, who was first subdued by Jewish security forces, was a British national who had come to the country \u201clawfully\u201d from Somalia as a child.<\/p>\n
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, who joined Starmer in Golders Green, told the BBC that she was treating the spree of antisemitic incidents as \u201cabsolutely an emergency,\u201d though she declined to adopt language used by Starmer\u2019s terrorism advisor that there was a \u201cnational security emergency\u201d because of its implications on civil liberties.<\/p>\n
Still, she said, she believed that frequent pro-Palestinian protests in London contained \u201cfar too many instances\u201d of hate crimes and she spoke of her opposition to antisemitism in terms of her own religious identity.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I take the stand that I am taking against antisemitism, I am doing so as a practicing Muslim. It is absolutely in line with my faith,\u201d Mahmood said. She added about British Jews: \u201cThis land is their land. It is my land too. We share this land and we must all work together to keep each other safe.\u201d<\/p>\n
The incident, which followed arsons at synagogues and of ambulances owned by a Jewish emergency service as well as a deadly attack on a Manchester synagogue last year, has prompted an escalation of fear among British Jews. Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis warned that visibly Jewish people \u2014 those wearing symbols of their Jewish identity \u2014 were \u201cnot always safe\u201d in England.<\/p>\n