UK bolsters synagogue security as antisemitic attacks surge across communities
Starmer pledged £25 million more for Jewish security as new attacks in London sharpened fears of a wider threat. Police are also probing possible foreign-state links.
Britain is putting another £25 million into Jewish security as a fresh arson probe in east London deepened alarm over a run of attacks on synagogues and community sites. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the violence was not a series of isolated shocks but part of a broader pattern, and pledged the government would use the “full force of the state” to protect Jewish communities.
Speaking at No. 10’s Tackling Antisemitism Forum on May 5, Starmer tied last October’s deadly attack at Heaton Park in Manchester and last week’s attack in Golders Green to a worsening climate of antisemitism. The new funding is meant to expand police patrols and security at synagogues, schools and community centres, while placing specialist and plain-clothes officers inside communities that have been left on edge by repeated attacks.
The scale of the threat was underscored by the Community Security Trust, which recorded 3,700 antisemitic incidents in the UK in 2025. That was the second-highest total ever recorded by the charity and 4% higher than in 2024, a sign that the surge has not eased even as public attention has intensified. For Jewish institutions already spending heavily on guards, alarms and secure perimeters, the question is no longer whether the danger is real, but whether the state response is keeping pace.
Counter-terrorism police were also investigating an arson incident at a former synagogue in east London on May 5, after a series of arson attacks on Jewish targets since March. Authorities are examining whether some of those attacks could have foreign-state links, including possible Iranian links, which would widen the issue from hate crime and domestic extremism into national security. That line of inquiry raises the stakes for police, intelligence agencies and ministers promising tighter protection.
The concern is not confined to Britain. The Anti-Defamation League said it had documented at least 21 physical attacks on synagogues in the United States over the past decade, along with 20 antisemitic plots or attacks targeting Jews, Zionists or Jewish institutions since January 2020. Thirteen of those incidents came in just the 20 months from July 2024 to March 2026. The March 12 attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan, left children in the synagogue preschool unharmed but was described by federal authorities as a targeted act of violence against the Jewish community.
The political test now is whether repeated promises of solidarity are becoming a coordinated security strategy. The new money, the police deployments and the terrorism probes suggest more than rhetoric, but the recent pace of attacks shows that protection is still being assembled in real time.
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