‘Intifada Against British Jews’: Two Jewish People Stabbed in London Amid Soaring Antisemitic Attacks

Two Jewish men were stabbed in broad daylight in the north London area of Golders Green on Wednesday, in an attack police are investigating as a suspected antisemitic assault after weeks of violence targeting Jewish sites in the British capital.

A 45-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after the attack, which left two men, one in his 70s and one in his 30s, hospitalized in stable condition. Counter-terrorism officers are leading the investigation and examining whether the incident is linked to a recent string of attacks on Jewish institutions, police said. 

Moments alleged knife attacker is arrested by police and members of the public after stabbing two British Jews in Golders Green. pic.twitter.com/25G0OYwbZD

— Elad Simchayoff (@Elad_Si) April 29, 2026

Shomrim, the Jewish neighborhood watch group, said a man armed with a knife had been seen running through the area and “attempting to stab Jewish members of the public.” Police used a taser during the arrest, and no officers were injured, according to police and local reports. 

Sacha Roytman Dratwa, CEO of the Combat Antisemitism Movement, compared the attacks, carried out by perpetrators who are “openly looking for Jewish bloodshed,” to those characterizing past Palestinian uprisings in Israel. 

“It seems like there is nothing short of an intifada against British Jews,” Roytman Dratwa told The Algemeiner.

The term “intifada,” Arabic for uprising, refers to two periods (the first beginning in 1987 and the second in 2000) when Palestinian terrorists ramped up violence targeting Israelis that included suicide bombings, shootings, and stabbings. In recent years, many anti-Israel activists have popularized the slogan “globalize the intifada,” which critics argue promotes attacks on Jews worldwide.

Roytman Dratwa added that the violence was being driven by open incitement and demanded a far stronger response from authorities.

“The British authorities have to act now; words are not enough. Action is needed at every level, from policing, legislation, education and the dismantling of the incitement networks,” he said.

“Enough has to mean enough, and we need to see results because this means an end to the bloodshed,” Roytman Dratwa added. “The UK has to stop this intifada on its own soil.”

A little-known militant group calling itself Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya, or HAYI, said one of its operatives carried out Wednesday’s attack, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist activity online. Analysts say the organization is linked to Iran and has previously taken responsibility for antisemitic incidents in the UK and parts of Europe.

In a statement circulated online, the group said, “Zionists were targeted by our lone wolves in the Golders Green area of London,” SITE reported.

Jewish residents in north London described the stabbing as shocking but not unexpected, saying weeks of attacks had pointed toward the risk of serious violence.

Keren, who lives near the scene of the attack, said the latest assault was “very worrying.”

“The other incidents did not result in any casualties, but it was clear that they would lead to serious physical attacks,” she said, adding that she hoped the escalation would push authorities to “actually do something constructive to stop the violence.”

Golders Green, long one of the most visible centers of Jewish life in London, has been on edge after a series of attacks. Last month, arsonists set fire to four ambulances belonging to the Jewish Hatzola organization in the area. Weeks later, a synagogue and the former premises of a Jewish charity in north London were also targeted. Four people were charged over the ambulance attack, according to police and local reports. 

Moran, an Israeli who moved to London with her British husband and three children after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack because she was afraid of the security situation in Israel, said the recent attacks had left her “very frightened” again, this time in the place she had chosen as safer. 

“What happened in Golders Green is not isolated,” she said, describing an incident at her children’s Jewish school in nearby Finchley last Friday, when a man filmed the building and then shouted abuse after a guard approached him.

“He shouted, ‘F**k the Jews,’ ‘I hate you,’ and ‘I don’t care about the Jews,'” Moran told The Algemeiner. The school, she added, is now urgently trying to raise money to increase security.

“It’s very ironic. I ran away from Israel because of the war, and in the end, I come here, and this is happening at my children’s school,” she said.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer called Wednesday’s stabbing an “utterly appalling” antisemitic attack.  

London Mayor Sadiq Khan said the city’s Jewish community had faced “a series of shocking antisemitic attacks” and said there could be no place for antisemitism in society. 

Nancy, a Jewish Londoner, also used the attack to sharply criticize the government, saying it had failed to prevent the escalation.

“It’s very scary here right now, and our government is useless,” she told The Algemeiner.  

The attack, she said, was not just an assault on two individuals but an “assault on an entire community’s right to exist freely in their own city.”

“When Jewish people can’t walk down a road in broad daylight without fearing for their lives, something has gone deeply, shamefully wrong in our society. We deserve to feel safe on the streets of London, and right now we do not,” she added. 

The Combat Antisemitism Movement urged the British government to step up security for Jewish communities, move quickly to prosecute those responsible, and address what it described as the ideological drivers behind the attacks.