Former Marines being hired to guard Jewish sites as Islamic terror threat raised in the UK

Synagogues and Jewish schools will reportedly be protected by former Royal Marines and veterans of the Parachute Regiment as antisemitic violence grips the country. It comes after the stabbing of two Jewish men in an attack on Golders Green, northwest London, on Wednesday and in the wake of a spate of attacks in Jewish neighborhoods in recent weeks. The series of incidents sparked the government’s decision on Thursday to raise the terrorism threat level to severe, meaning that another attack is now “highly likely.”

The JC Their deployment, reported by the Sunday Times, follows a flurry of incidents targeting the Jewish community in recent weeks, including the stabbing of two Jewish men in Golers Green by Essa Suleiman, a 45-year-old Somali Muslim who arrived in the UK legally as a child during the 1990s, the attempted fire-bombing of multiple synagogues, and the arson attack that destroyed four Hatzola ambulances.

The CST, which distributes Home Office allocated to the community, is responsible for the decision, having engaged a private contractor whose security personnel largely come from the armed forces, including elite fighting units in the Royal Navy and army.

The move has come to light after the government raised the national terrorism threat level from “substantial” to “severe,” indicating that an attack on British soil in the next six months is considered highly likely.

Two Musim men have been sentenced to life in prison in the UK for attempting to carry out what could have been the country’s deadliest terror attack. Walid Saadaoui and Amar Hussein pledged their allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) and were planning an attack on England’s Jewish community.

The security minister Dan Jarvis said the threat level increase was not determined “solely” as a result of the Golders Green attack, but had also been “driven by an increase in mainly Islamic” threats. An enhanced security presence around synagogues and Jewish community buildings has been particularly visible in London and Manchester.

 The former troops began protecting Jewish sites in the aftermath of the Manchester synagogue attack last October, the report said, during which a terrorist drove his car into people gathered outside the congregation during Yom Kippur services and stabbed one person to death. Another person died during the attack after being inadvertently shot by police.

Britain is facing the most serious threat to its Jewish community “at any point in history,” according to Rowley, who has warned that a convergence of hate crime, Islamic terrorism and hostile state activity has created a dangerous environment. Rowley said the growing scale of antisemitism is being fuelled in part by online platforms, where extremist views are becoming increasingly normalised. Citing polling data, he pointed to a troubling shift among younger generations, with one in six young people now apparently believing the Holocaust is “a lie”.

He added: “If you overlay three things now – hate crime, Islamic terrorism and hostile state activity – you add all that together, that combined effect with that building of ideology online, it is really dangerous and troubling. Jewish communities feel that: you can see that in how they talk, how it’s making them change their lives. That’s an appalling state of affairs.”

Political leaders including Sir Keir Starmer have called for a reassessment of how such demonstrations are managed, citing concerns about chants such as “globalize the Intifada”, which the prime minister labelled an example of “extreme racism/antisemitism.”