London police say stabbing of 2 Jewish men is an act of terrorism

LONDON — Two Jewish men were stabbed and injured on a London street on Wednesday, in what police called an act of terrorism. Police arrested a 45-year-old man on suspicion of attempted murder in the city’s latest antisemitic attack.

The Metropolitan Police said the attack in the Golders Green area left two men, ages 34 and 76, hospitalized with knife wounds.

Counterterrorism police are investigating whether the stabbings are linked to recent arson attacks on synagogues and other Jewish sites in the British capital. Detectives are probing a potential Iranian link to those incidents, but police said it was too soon to say whether Wednesday’s attack was connected.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer held a meeting of the government’s emergency committee and vowed to “deal with the roots of antisemitism and extremism.” Buckingham Palace said that King Charles III was “deeply concerned.”

Metropolitan Police Chief Mark Rowley deplored “another horrendous act of violence directed against our Jewish communities.”

But some British Jews expressed anger at authorities’ failure to keep them safe. Rowley faced shouts of “shame on you” and “resign” from bystanders when he made a statement to media at the scene of the stabbings.

The security organization Shomrim said that a suspect “was seen running along Golders Green Road armed with a knife and attempting to stab Jewish members of the public.” It said that the suspect was detained by Shomrim members and arrested by police, who used a stun gun on him.

Surveillance camera footage showed a man beside a bus stop donning a yarmulke before a passerby with a knife lunges at him.

Police said that the suspect also tried to stab police officers, but that none was injured. Rowley said the suspect, whose name has not been released, had “a history of serious violence and mental health issues.”

Arson attacks in recent weeks targeted Jewish sites in London, including a charity’s ambulances in Golders Green and a synagogue a few miles away.

“Today is somewhat worse because it’s a physical attack against two human beings,” said resident Anthony Silber, adding that “it’s shocking to hear, shocking to listen to, shocking to watch for those that saw, but it’s not a surprise.”

Britain’s Jewish community is long-established, but tiny as a percentage of the population, numbering about 300,000. The northwest London suburb of Golders Green is one of its epicenters, home to kosher restaurants, Jewish schools, and several dozen synagogues, as well as large Asian and Middle Eastern communities.

The number of antisemitic incidents reported across the U.K. has soared since the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the subsequent war in Gaza, according to the Community Security Trust. The group recorded 3,700 incidents in 2025, up from 1,662 in 2022.

In October 2025, an attacker drove his car into people gathered outside a Manchester synagogue on Yom Kippur and stabbed one person to death. Another person killed in the attack had been inadvertently shot by police.

Since the start of the Iran war on Feb. 28, there has been a string of arson attacks on Jewish sites and opponents of the Iranian government. Several people, ranging in age from teens to people in their 40s, have been arrested and charged in the arsons, which have not caused injuries.

Counterterrorism officers are investigating whether the arson attacks were the work of Iranian proxies. Several have been claimed online in the name of Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia. Israel’s government has described the organization, whose name means the Islamic Movement of the Companions of the Right, as a recently founded group with suspected links to “an Iranian proxy” that has also claimed responsibility for synagogue attacks in Belgium and the Netherlands.

An online claim in the same name also took responsibility for Wednesday’s stabbing. But security experts say that the name may be a flag of convenience rather than a coherent group and that its claims should be treated with caution.

However, the U.K. has accused Iran of using criminal proxies to conduct attacks on European soil targeting Iranian opposition media outlets and the Jewish community. Britain’s MI5 domestic intelligence service says that more than 20 “potentially lethal” Iran-backed plots were disrupted in the year ending in October.

Britain’s chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, said that Jews face a campaign of violence and intimidation and that words of condemnation are no longer sufficient.

“This must be a moment that demands meaningful action from every institution, every community, every leader, and every decent person in our country,” he said. “This is a hatred that we must face down together.”

Israeli President Isaac Herzog said that the world must “wake up” to a rising wave of anti-Jewish hatred.

“In one of the great capital cities of the West, it has become dangerous to openly walk the streets as a Jew,” Herzog posted on X. “This is an unacceptable situation.”