Man charged with attempted murder after stabbing two Jewish men in London

A 45-year-old man has been charged after two Jewish men were stabbed in Golders Green, a neighborhood in north London with a large Jewish population, as police treated the case as a terrorist incident and widened the investigation to an earlier attack the same day.

Police identified the defendant as Essa Suleiman and said he faces two counts of attempted murder tied to the Golders Green stabbings and a third attempted-murder count over an earlier incident elsewhere in the city that left another man with minor injuries. The two men injured in Golders Green, Shloime Rand, 34, and Moshe Ben Baila, 76, were hospitalized with knife wounds and were reported to be in stable condition.

Counterterrorism officers were leading the inquiry, underscoring the seriousness with which investigators were handling the attack. While police have said the case is being investigated as terrorism, they have not publicly established a motive. That distinction has mattered to Jewish community leaders and to residents watching a string of threats and attacks that have heightened anxiety across London.

The stabbings came against a tense backdrop for Britain’s Jewish community. On March 23, four ambulances used by the Jewish volunteer-led Hatzola service were set on fire in Golders Green in a separate incident treated as antisemitic arson. Other arson attacks in north west London have also been under counterterrorism investigation, adding to a sense that security threats are not isolated.

The government raised the U.K.’s national terrorism threat level from substantial to severe on April 30, saying the change reflected a broader rise in Islamist and extreme right-wing terrorist threat, not only the Golders Green attack. Prime Minister Keir Starmer addressed the incident from Downing Street the same day and said the public must “open their eyes to Jewish pain.”

Jewish security volunteers from Shomrim said they were among the first on the scene, a detail that reflected how community protection groups have become an immediate part of the response when violence breaks out. Their presence, alongside police and emergency crews, has become a grim feature of life in parts of north London where antisemitic fears have intensified.

For Jewish families in Golders Green and beyond, the case has sharpened questions about whether enough is being done to protect places of worship, schools and streets that have already seen repeated threats. The charge marks one step in the legal process, but it is the wider climate of fear that now hangs over the neighborhood.