Green Party leader criticizes police for taking down stabber

Top UK cop: British Jews facing greatest ever threat amid ‘epidemic’ of antisemitism

London police chief Mark Rowley says he has asked for funding for 300 armed officers to protect city’s Jewish community; Starmer mulls ban on some anti-Israel protests

The UK’s top police officer said in an interview published Saturday that British Jews are facing their greatest ever threat, with social media fueling an “epidemic” of antisemitism and called for 300 armed officers to be deployed to protect the Jewish community of north London.

“If you overlay three things now — hate crime, terrorism and hostile state activity — you add all that together, that combined effect with that building of ideology online, that is really dangerous and troubling,” said Mark Rowley, head of London’s Metropolitan Police.

“And Jewish communities feel that and you can see that in how they talk, how it’s making them change their lives. That’s an ­appalling state of affairs,” he said.

He told The Times that British Jews are on the “hate” list of every racist and extremist group.

“Whether you’re extreme left, whether you’re an Islamist terrorist, ­whether you’re a right-wing terrorist, and some hostile states as well, now with some sort of Iranian-related threats. There’s a sort of ghastly Venn diagram that they’re at the middle of,” he says.

Asked if the British Jewish community faces its greatest threat, Rowley responds: “That has to be true.”

The comments came after the police said Friday that it had charged 45-year-old Essa Suleiman with attempted murder following an antisemitic terror attack during which two Jewish men were stabbed on Wednesday.

Suleiman has been charged with two counts of attempted murder and one count of possession of a bladed article in a public place in relation to the attack, police said.

The Somalia-born British citizen is suspected of stabbing Shloime Rand, 34, and Moshe Shine, 76, in the attack in the heavily Jewish neighborhood of Golders Green, in north London.

Since then, Britain has raised its national terrorism threat level to “severe,” signaling that a terrorist attack is considered highly likely.

Rowley said he has requested urgent government funding to recruit 300 officers to protect the Jewish community. He said he wants a dedicated group of neighborhood officers and firearms officers to be permanently stationed in northwest London, calling it “essential.”

Banning anti-Israel rallies

Also Saturday, Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in an interview that banning some pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel marches could be justified, especially when they call for the intifada to spread, a term widely seen as calling for violence against Jews.

Labour leader Starmer is under pressure to act. Wednesday’s stabbing was the most serious and violent in a spate of recent attacks aimed at Jews in London, and comes less than a year after a deadly attack at a synagogue in Manchester.

Starmer visited the scene of the attacks and a Jewish volunteer ambulance service on Thursday and was booed by some locals, who accused him of not doing enough to protect them.

They also denounced pro-Palestinian activists holding marches in British cities, which began after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel that sparked the war in Gaza.

The prime minister, a former human rights lawyer and chief public prosecutor whose wife is Jewish, said many Jewish people had told them they were affected by “the repeat nature” of the protests.

“I’m a big defender of freedom of expression, peaceful protests,” he told the BBC in the interview broadcast Saturday. “But when there are chants like ‘globalize the intifada’, that’s completely off limits. Clearly, there should be tougher action in relation to that.”

The intifada refers to the Palestinian uprisings against Israel in 1987-1993 and the early 2000s, with the Second Intifada featuring waves of suicide bombings and other deadly shooting and stabbing attacks against Israeli civilians.

Starmer said he wanted to police the language used on marches more strongly and that there were “instances” when some protests should be stopped altogether.

Discussions had been taking place with the police for some time about what further action could be taken, he added.

In December last year, police in London and the northwest city of Manchester said they would arrest anyone chanting “globalise the intifada”.

The Jewish community in Britain views the chant as “very, very dangerous,” said Starmer.

On Thursday, the UK increased its security alert level to “severe” — the second highest — in part because of the attack in Golders Green, as well as the threat from Islamist extremism and the far-right.

The police have also said they would look closely at all calls about future protests.

Not fit to lead any political party

The police response to Wednesday’s stabbing also fuelled controversy with the leader of the left-populist Green Party, which has made major gains in recent months, accusing police of brutality in how officers apprehended Suleiman.

Green Party leader Zach Polanski retweeted, without comment, a post on X alleging that officers were “repeatedly and violently kicking a mentally ill man in the head” when he was already incapacitated after being tased.

The accusation, which Polanski later withdrew and apologized for, sparked angry retorts from Starmer and Rowley.

Starmer said Polanski was “not fit to lead any political party” and said officers acted correctly, fearing the stabber could have been carrying explosives.

“I don’t know what was going through the mind of those officers, but if I were there, I’d be thinking: ‘He’s going to detonate something. He’s going to blow me up and everybody around here.’ And in those circumstances, I think you can quite see why what could have gone through their mind is: ‘We need to do whatever we can to disable this guy,’” Starmer told the BBC.

“You have to make a decision in that split moment according to the situation as you understand it to be. And for politicians to wade in, as Zack Polanski did, is disgraceful. He’s not fit to lead any political party,” Starmer said.

Starmer’s comments came after Rowley wrote a letter to Polanski, saying that his unfounded claims could have a “chilling effect” on policing.

Polanski, who is Jewish, apologized on Friday, saying that: “Everyone in leadership has a responsibility for lowering the temperature at a time of such tension, and I apologise for sharing a tweet in haste.”

Ahead of local elections next week, Polanski’s party has been embroiled in a string of antisemitic scandals.