From Canada to the Netherlands, a week of synagogue attacks
Over the last week, we have witnessed a sequence of attacks targeting synagogues across the West.
A synagogue in Toronto, Canada was targeted with gunfire, leaving bullet holes in the glass doors of the building, allegedly by use of “military grade weapons”. Thankfully, no injuries have been reported.
A synagogue in Liège, Belgium was targeted with an explosive device in the early hours which also damaged buildings across the road from the historic shul.
A synagogue and Jewish pre-school In West Bloomfield, near Detroit, Michigan was attacked by an armed individual. Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, a 41 year-old Lebanese-born US citizen, allegedly rammed a vehicle into the Temple Israel synagogue. The 140 children and staff present in one of America’s largest synagogues were quickly evacuated.
A synagogue in Trondheim, Norway was subjected to an attempted terror attack. One suspect was said to have been arrested, and a man hunt is reportedly under way for the other.
A synagogue in Rotterdam in the Netherlands was also targeted with an explosive device on Friday.
Gideon Falter, Chief Executive of Campaign Against Antisemitism, appeared on GB News to discuss these frightening developments, and why the authorities globally are not doing enough to stand up to extremism. Watch what he had to say here.
These attacks are an alarming sign of how emboldened Islamist terrorists, likely inspired by Iran, are becoming.
We sadly know that British synagogues are not immune to attack, and we must recognise the pattern in these incidents and urge the British Government to do more to tackle the threat.
It can start by finally proscribing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The Government promised to do so but has yet to deliver.
Sign our petition to urge our Government to ban the IRGC at antisemitism.org/BanTheIRGC
London hosts Al Quds Day again
At the beginning of last week we were pleased to hear that the notorious Al Quds Day march had been banned by the Metropolitan Police, a move which we, alongside a number of MPs, had been calling for.
To learn why, watch this video.
The Islamic Human Rights Commission Trust, which organises Al Quds Day in the UK, was disappointed with this decision. The Islamic Human Rights Commission Ltd issued a statement saying:
“If it was not clear already, the police have brazenly abandoned their sworn principle of policing without fear or favour, and have capitulated to the pressure of the Zionist lobby.”
This kind of extremist rhetoric confirms the decision to cancel the march.
Stephen Silverman, Director of Investigations and Enforcement at Campaign Against Antisemitism, appeared in the media this week to commend the decision to ban the march. You can find his interviews on BBC 5 Live here, and LBC News here.
But whilst the march may have been banned, extremists still gathered in London for a static demonstration at the weekend in its place.
There, supporters of the Iranian regime, which runs the IRGC, marked Al Quds Day with an outpouring of love for the late and current Supreme Leaders of Iran and for the banned Palestine Action group.
There was also support for the bombing of Tel Aviv.
Volunteers from our Demonstrations and Events Monitoring Unit heard chanting of “long live the resistance” and “death, death to the IDF”. The activist-musical act Bob Vylan, which popularised the latter chant, was present onstage.
They also documented signs referencing antisemitic tropes about Jewish power and Epstein and the Battle of Khaybar, a massacre of Jews in 628 CE, and “ZioS***s”, and comparisons of Israel to Nazis, in breach of the International Definition of Antisemitism.
Some twelve arrests are believed to have been made at the protest. We will no doubt be laughably assured that Al Quds Day 2026 was a ‘peaceful’ protest. The radicalism on show and the need for police action say otherwise.
Attacked for being Jewish
“Britain 2026, and I was pushed in front of a moving vehicle because I am a Jew.”
This is the testimony of a man who was allegedly a victim of an appalling hate crime which occurred in North Finchley, London, last weekend.
Brian Harris, a successful Jewish music producer, said that he was thrown in front of a car by a man who shouted abuse towards him, including “F*** off you Jew, you should be dead.”
Mr Harris said that he called the police after the man began shouting slurs such as “Heil Hitler”, “Death to all Jews”, “you are all c***s”, “you should die” and “you should all be buried” at him, before the physical assault – which left Mr Harris with severe bruises on his legs – reportedly occurred.
According to the Metropolitan Police, no arrests have yet been made.
We are offering £5,000 for information about the suspect that leads to a conviction.
Please e-mail [email protected] in confidence, with any information.
In another incident, a man is accused of asking a Jewish barrister “Are you Jewish”, before attacking him by punching him in the jaw.
Tony Steer, 35, appeared in Willesden Magistrates Court yesterday regarding the alleged incident which took place at a birthday party hosted at Finchley Cricket Club in London. He has denied the charges of assault by beating and racially or religiously aggravated assault by beating.
According to Nathaniel Bor, a Jewish barrister, Mr Steer approached “with a big smile on his face giving two middle fingers to my friend and I”. Following an exchange, the defendant was said to have repeatedly asked Mr Bor “Are you Jewish” before punching him in the jaw – which has reportedly left Nathaniel Bor with severely painful injuries.
The trial is ongoing.
Are Jewish students feeling safe on campus?
One in five students would be reluctant to live with a Jewish student at university, according to a new report.
The report on antisemitism in higher education also finds that almost half of students at university have witnessed chants on their campus which glorify proscribed antisemitic terrorist organisations such as Hamas and Hizballah, and a quarter claim to have seen behaviour that targets Jewish students.
Published by UJS, the report, which surveyed 1,000 students of all backgrounds, further notes that almost half of students have witnessed justification of the 7th October massacre, rising to 77% among those who encounter Palestine protests regularly.
Encouragingly, a clear majority of 82% view calls to ‘globalise the intifada’ to be antisemitic.
More generally, almost two-thirds of students say that protests have disrupted their learning, and four in ten have altered their journey to campus due to disruption.
Notably, some of these trends are worse at Russell Group universities.
This report captures the shameful state of the UK education system.
Extremism is normalised in student societies, campuses are now places that Jewish students avoid for fear of encountering regular protests featuring genocidal and antisemitic pro-terror chants, and students of all backgrounds are having their expensive learning disrupted, despite what they are paying.
One recent example of this campus extremism comes from Kings College London, which is at the centre of a scandal regarding an intimidating video that was posted by a group calling itself ‘KCLStandsForJustice’.
Our lawyers are reviewing the video and examining next steps.
We will also be writing to the University to take action to identify those behind the video and, at a minimum, apply policies around conduct and bullying to the perpetrators.
Far too little is being done about extremism at educational institutions by university authorities, regulators and the Government, all of whom are failing students, especially Jewish students.
The Guardian has done it again
A recent opinion editorial in The Guardian manages to portray something as trivial as the opening of a Gail’s in north London as a microcosm of the newspaper’s warped view of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
It’s little more than repackaged Soviet antisemitism, where rapacious, capitalist, colonialist Jews are quietly victimising innocent, selfless Arabs who, the article ludicrously implies, are somehow indigenous to Archway.
This is The Guardian opinion page in its comfort zone: quietly and subtly encouraging anti-Israeli sentiment among its readers.
So many of the newspaper’s opinion pieces encouraging animus towards Jews and Israelis pass under the radar, but this one is so egregious that it has been widely noticed, ridiculed and condemned on social media – indeed, the story is trending on X.
For a reminder of what happened at Gail’s, you can watch our viral video here.
It is shocking that the content of the article was not flagged before it was printed, but it is perhaps less surprising that editors should care when you consider who is involved in the regulation of British journalism – such as a Senior Communications Officer in IPSO, the UK’s biggest press regulator, who allegedly reposted contentious content from her LinkedIn profile comparing contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
Here at CAA, we are looking for a more responsible Senior Communications and Research Officer to join our team and fight antisemitism. For more information, or to apply, click here.
CPS’s woeful antisemitic crime prosecution figures are revealed
Home Office figures obtained through freedom of information requests have shown that hate crimes against Muslims are almost twice as likely to result in prosecution than those against Jews.
Despite Jewish people being some ten times more likely to suffer hate crime, according to our analysis of Home Office policing figures, this new data shows that around one in fifteen anti-Muslim crimes were prosecuted (which is poor) but only one in 26 anti-Jewish crimes were prosecuted (which is appalling).
The discrepancy between prosecution rates is so shameful that one begins to wonder if there is not more to it.
For a decade, we have called on the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to publish a breakdown of hate crime prosecutions. Following our engagement, Directors of Public Prosecutions (who lead the CPS) have repeatedly promised Home Secretaries that they would do so, but never did.
Now we can see why.
As we knew but could never conclusively show while figures were kept secret, prosecutions for antisemitic hate crimes are woeful.
Every time a major antisemitism case is dropped, the CPS does damage control in the Jewish community, insisting that there are many other cases that are prosecuted. At CAA, we always knew that this was untrue.
This is an unacceptable failure by the criminal justice system that has been overlooked for too long, and now, at a time of unprecedented levels of antisemitism in our country, it can no longer be tolerated.
The CPS must now finally publish these figures and must explain to the Jewish community and the wider public what urgent and drastic steps it proposes immediately to take to address this scandal.
If you would like to work in a team which continuously endeavours to hold our criminal justice system to account, then perhaps our Paralegal role is for you.
You can find more information here.
Towards a more cohesive UK?
“The blunt truth is that in the coming decades geopolitics will test the strength of our communities like never before.”
So says the Prime Minister in his foreword to a major new policy paper from the Communities Ministry, titled Protecting What Matters: Towards a more confident, cohesive, and resilient UK.
The reality is that foreign conflicts are already testing our entire society like never before – and we are failing.
Two successive governments have utterly failed to rise to the challenge of surging extremism and antisemitism, which is now also manifesting in growing sectarianism in our politics.
The Prime Minister rightly observes that “we cannot be blind to the dangers or the stakes.”
Elements of this paper point in the right direction, and you can read more about it here.
The Government has also announced a plan to strength the Charity Commission’s powers to tackle extremism, however we consider that a new body with the necessary expertise and powers to tackle extremism is needed.
To date, the Charity Commission’s response to extremism in charitable organisations has been woeful, especially in relation to religious extremism. After all, according to our polling, 91% of British Jews do not think that the authorities are doing enough to tackle religious extremism.
Investigations drag on, and if they conclude at all it is with slaps on the wrist. Even repeated concerns seem not to escalate. The Commission sometimes seems to be concerned more with procedure than with motive and impact.
Furthermore, several of the powers given to the Commission a decade ago when its powers were last upgraded seem never to have been used.
For too long, Islamist extremists have been able to operate under the guise of charitable religious organisations. That has endangered society, including the Jewish community, as well as having a corrosive effect on the way that the charitable sector is viewed.
One of the most encouraging signs would be for the Charity Commission to recognise Islamism for what it is: a form of extremism that is uniquely prevalent and dangerous in our society.
More encouraging still would be the recognition that Islamism does not only afflict charities, and that a powerful new counter-extremism body is now necessary.
Jewish mothers
This weekend, we celebrated Mother’s Day.
We asked Jewish mothers a simple question: What is it like to raise Jewish children in Britain today, knowing they may face prejudice just for being who they are?
Take a moment to watch this video to hear what they said.
We are filled with admiration for the strength of Jewish mothers, who inspire us to keep up the fight.
Thank you!
