Where is the urgency on these firebombs?
Over the past half week, a Jewish institution has been targeted practically every day.
Today, police are investigating an arson attack on a Jewish-owned shop in Watford as religiously aggravated.
In the early hours of Wednesday morning, two men allegedly attempted to commit arson against Finchley Reform Synagogue, apparently throwing a brick and two bottles containing petrol towards the building. A 47-year-old woman and a 46-year-old man have been arrested.
On Thursday night, the Israeli embassy was allegedly targeted by Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia, an Islamist group that has claimed responsibility for a number of attacks against Jewish targets in recent weeks – including the Golders Green arson attack. It said that it had launched drones carrying hazardous material targeting the Israeli embassy. Police officers wearing protective suits and gas masks were investigating on Friday morning, and if an attack had been attempted, it was unsuccessful.
On Friday night, in Hendon, the former site of a Jewish charity where the signage is still visible in the window was attacked. Police say a man was witnessed approaching the site carrying a plastic bag filled with three bottles of fluid. He placed the bag against the building and attempted to set it alight. The bottles failed to properly ignite, and he fled the scene.
Then, on Saturday night, Kenton United Synagogue was firebombed. A seventeen-year-old boy and a nineteen-year-old man were arrested by police, and today at Westminster Magistrates’ Court the seventeen-year-old boy has pleaded guilty to arson not endangering life. The attack was claimed online by the Ashab al-Yamin Islamist group.
We are grateful to the police for their swift investigations. If anyone has any information about any of these incidents, please contact us or the Metropolitan Police. Any and all perpetrators must be brought to justice.
But catching perpetrators after the fact is not remotely enough.
We must confront the rampant extremism and radicalisation in this country.
We led the reaction in the media to the firebombing attacks, with appearances on numerous broadcasters from LBC to TalkTV, and quotes across the newspapers.
We also visited Finchley to document the aftermath of that arson attack, before others had taken place.
There is a suspicion that many of these arson attacks – which also include the targeting of a Persian media company – are being orchestrated or funded by Iran.
Indeed, senior officers at the Metropolitan Police have warned of British residents potentially being paid by and acting for foreign states to target Jewish and diasporic Iranian communities.
It is therefore more urgent than ever that the necessary security measures are put in place to cut these dangerous ties between international extremist networks. That starts with the banning and proscription of organisations like the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
Thank you to everyone who has already signed our petition calling on the Government to ban the IRGC. This pressure is helping. Last week, the House of Lords voted to force MPs to discuss the issue.
You can sign our petition at antisemitism.org/BanTheIRGC.
CPS ordered to pay CAA’s legal costs
The CPS has been ordered to pay CAA’s legal costs after falsely prosecuting Mark Birbeck for “assaulting emergency workers” when he held a sign saying “Hamas is Terrorist [sic]”.
In September 2024, Mark, who is the founder of Our Fight UK, one of the Jewish community’s staunchest allies in the first against antisemitism, was accused of assaulting two emergency workers at a protest at which he had been holding the sign alongside Niyak Ghorbani.
CAA stepped in and has provided Mark with free legal representation, as we have many times before (for Niyak too).
Two days before Mark’s trial in October 2025, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) revealed that it had been sitting on video footage that exonerated Mark, and discontinued its prosecution.
A Judge has now ruled that this was one of those “very rare” and “exceptional cases” where the prosecution had made such “clear and stark” errors that the CPS was ordered to pay defence costs related to their “improper” mistakes. You can read more about the case here.
CAA is proud to have assisted Mark, as he and Niyak have been repeatedly arrested and on occasion charged, only to have bail conditions lifted by courts and cases collapse, with our support.
It is obscene that the police and prosecution are wasting time hounding people who are simply pointing out that Hamas is a proscribed terrorist organisation in the UK, rather than focusing on the terror sympathisers in the regular hate marches that have transformed our cities and made antisemitic hate crime a daily feature of Jewish life in modern Britain.
Not safe for Jews when this driver is driving
“Is it safe for Jews to ride the Bakerloo line?
“Not when I’m driving.”
This exchange was caught on camera, and you can view it here.
It is revolting and plainly runs counter to the most basic expectations of public transport. Already over two thirds of British Jews do not feel comfortable disclosing their identity on public transport, according to our polling.
We have seen confirmation that the driver has been identified and suspended whilst Transport for London (TfL) carries out an investigation.
We thank TfL for intervening quickly, and expect that, if the interaction in the footage is borne out, his employment will be terminated.
Since we publicised this incident, it has begun trending online.
Hateful influencers banned after CAA action
Penofein is a content creator (real name Harry Marsh) who has built a following by subjecting Jewish people to Jew-baiting pranks. Here, he places coins on the ground and says he is making a “Jew trap”.
Our online investigators looked into him and discovered that he doesn’t even live locally, meaning he literally travels to Jewish areas in order to racially abuse Jews and excite his deranged followers.
Police have contacted him – but only to say he can’t film inside shops. Meanwhile, platforms like YouTube, Instagram and TikTok continued to host this content, with creators actually profiting from it.
This is a dire situation. Which is why we took action. We got in touch with TikTok, and they have banned him as a user.
We are grateful to TikTok for taking such swift action.
Subsequently, YouTube also banned him after we alerted the platform to his content.
We then turned to Dan and Ish (real names Daniel Javanmard and Ismael Puga).
These two thugs like to target Jews in London for online views on TikTok and Instagram. In one horrendous clip, they corner and mock a disabled Jewish man.
After we publicised their antics, their videos are no longer up and Gymshark terminated any partnership with them.
Diversity and Inclusion Coordinator sacked
The Diversity and Inclusion Coordinator at the Bristol school that cancelled a visit from a Jewish Labour MP has reportedly lost her job.
Saima Akhtar held the role at Cabot Learning Federation (CLF), a multi-academy trust which runs Bristol Brunel Academy. The school came under scrutiny after postponing a visit by local MP Damien Egan last September after learning that members of its staff who were part of the National Education Union (NEU) were planning protests in conjunction with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
Ms Akhtar was accused of having described Hamas terrorists who carried out the 7th October atrocity as “heroes fighting for justice”.
You can read more here.
Fawning over Tucker Carlson at the BBC
Last Sunday, Tucker Carlson appeared in a pre-recorded interview on the BBC’s flagship politics show, Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg.
In the host’s absence, the show was anchored by Victoria Derbyshire.
There are three things to note:
First, it is regrettable that our national broadcaster decided to invite one of the biggest promoters of antisemitic conspiracies on the American Right to its main politics programme. Just after we had succeeded in preventing far-right American antisemite Kanye West from entering the UK, the BBC quickly rushed to fill that gap by having Mr Carlson on. Now the BBC will be asking its Jewish viewers to cough up their licence fee to pay for this disinformation.
Second, to her credit Victoria Derbyshire did attempt to push back on Mr Carlson’s obvious obsession with the Jewish state and blaming it for everything from the ban on Palestine Action to Jeffrey Epstein. However, she is plainly no match for him as a rhetorician, which BBC producers should have known.
Third, and most tellingly, two of the three panellists – Sir Alex Younger, the former Head of MI6, and Prof. Mary Beard, the popular historian – admitted that they agreed with much of what Mr Carlson had said.
Sir Alex described the interview as “amazing” and said that Mr Carlson was “basically right” in his analysis of the American President’s decision to go to war – which Mr Carlson had said was because President Trump is a “slave” to Israel.
He even jumped on the bandwagon of obsession with the Jewish state, observing, with an eloquence rather beneath what one might have expected of our intelligence leaders, that President Trump has become more traditional, “intervening in the Middle East, hanging out with Israel, doing wars.”
Prof. Beard described it as a “wonderful interview in some ways” and that “it was really surprising to find oneself agreeing with some things that Tucker Carlson said.” Sir Alex vigorously nodded his agreement.
It says even more about the BBC – and elite opinion in Britain – that its mainstream panellists find themselves agreeing with one of the biggest names on the American far-right when he blames Israel for every ill in his country and ours.
Gary Lineker’s rat emoji was just the tip of the iceberg
Disgraced football pundit Gary Lineker recently shared a video which accuses Israel of being the “Fourth Reich”.
It says that Israelis are “proudly racist” and “proudly fascist” and that they have “no humanity”, and calls for shaming anyone who visits the Jewish state.
But perhaps, you might suggest, he did not watch that far into the video?
Well presumably he watched at least the first line, which says of the Jewish state: “The whole world has to isolate this rogue apartheid genocidal maniac, serial-killing, pathologically lying state.”
So that gave him the gist.
We can safely assume he watched it all though, because he has previously said: “I read everything through before I post and if I’m 1 per cent doubtful of how it might be perceived, I don’t press send.”
So he meant at least to amplify, if not endorse, this message.
Turns out the rat emoji was just the tip of the iceberg.
What do white supremacists and Islamists have in common?
A Tennessee white supremacist has pleaded guilty to attempting to provide Hizballah with a list of 35,000 individuals whom he claimed were linked to Israel, according to the U.S. Justice Department, in addition to separate arson charges tied to a politically-motivated bombing.
White supremacists believe in the superiority of the white race, to the exclusion of minorities, including Jews, who are among the groups who have faced much of their ire historically.
Hizballah is an Iranian-backed antisemitic genocidal terrorist organisation that aims to annihilate the Jewish state and targets Jews worldwide.
It is extraordinary how many extremist political and religious ideologies, which supposedly have such little common ground, find allyship in their hatred of the Jews.
Yom HaZikaron
Today has been Yom HaZikaron in Israel.
This year, it is particularly poignant, coming in the midst of two and a half years of attacks on Jewish civilians by the antisemitic Islamist terrorists of Hamas, Hizballah, Ansar Allah (the Houthis) and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
We remember the victims. May their memory be a blessing.
