A wave of antisemitic attacks in Britain reveals a new threat

On march 23rd four ambulances belonging to Hatzola, a Jewish charity, were set alight in north London. On April 15th two people dressed in dark clothing and balaclavas threw a brick and bottles that may have contained petrol at a synagogue. A few days later a fire was set next to the former offices of a Jewish educational charity. The day after that a bottle containing accelerant was flung through a synagogue window.

Saul Taylor, the president of the United Synagogue, lamented “an epidemic of anti-Jewish hate”. But the attacks in London are not just the latest examples of a centuries-long assault on British Jews, which has sometimes been more, sometimes less violent. They may also reflect changes in the activities of hostile states and the rise of vandalism for hire.

Britain is not the only country where antisemitic attacks have occurred. In March synagogues were bombed in Belgium and the Netherlands. An office block and a Jewish school were attacked in Amsterdam. The attacks on the continent, like those in London, have caused no deaths, which may reflect a lack of competence rather than deliberate restraint. Targeting has sometimes been sloppy; Molotov cocktails have failed to ignite.

Many of the attacks, in Britain and elsewhere, have been claimed by a new group called Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia, which has circulated crude videos. British police are cagey about whether the group is linked to Iran, but the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (icct), a Dutch think-tank, notes considerable overlap between the new group’s social-media activities and those of Iranian-aligned militias. On April 15th, amid the attacks on Jewish institutions, a firebomb was thrown at the London offices of an Iranian media group loathed by the regime.

Iran has a long history of violent international operations. In 2024 judges in Argentina ruled that it was behind an attack on a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires three decades earlier, which killed 85 people (the alleged mastermind was recently appointed head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps). Last October Sir Ken McCallum, the director-general of mi5, revealed that his agency had tracked at least 20 potentially lethal Iran-backed plots over the past year.

Tactics seem to be changing, says Matthew Levitt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, an American outfit, who maintains a database. Iran once relied on sympathisers and agents to carry out attacks, which led to recriminations and diplomatic retaliation when they were caught. In 2021 an Iranian diplomat was convicted of plotting to bomb a rally in France.

These days the country tends to recruit young local criminals through social media, offering money for surveillance or attacks. In February a Danish court convicted two Swedes, aged 18 and 21, for terrorism after they threw hand grenades at the Israeli embassy in Copenhagen in 2024. Russia uses a similar tactic. Last October Dylan Earl, a British drug dealer, was sentenced to 17 years in prison for arranging an arson attack on a warehouse containing goods bound for Ukraine.

Such operations often fail. The local criminals are inexpert, and they sometimes subcontract attacks to others. But even an unsuccessful operation is likely to create fear and confusion, and it might provide some content for social media. The costs in money are small, and the costs in prison time are not paid by Iran or Russia. “If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t really matter,” says Julian Lanchès, a researcher at the icct.

The rise of vandalism for hire is a dismal development, which could outlast the conflict with Iran. Richard Verber of the United Synagogue has watched British synagogues build fences and hire more guards. It makes no difference to worshippers if the people who threaten them are motivated more by foreign money than by ideology. There is, as he puts it, no such thing as a reassuring Molotov cocktail.■