by Jim Chimirie on X
The government has raised the national threat level to severe. An attack, it now says, is highly likely. It cited a rising Islamist threat and the previous day’s terrorist attack in Golders Green. It thanked the police and security services. It asked the public to remain vigilant. It did not explain how we got here.
Essa Suleiman was known to Prevent. He had served nine years for repeatedly stabbing a police officer in the head, face and leg. He was wanted by the Met on the morning of April 29 for a knife attack in Southwark. Police arrived within six minutes. He had gone. Two hours and fifty minutes later he was stabbing elderly Jewish men in the face outside their synagogue in Golders Green. The attack was claimed by an Iranian proxy group. The IRGC, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps that funds, directs and inspires those proxy networks, remains unproscribed in Britain.
That is not a failure of intelligence. The intelligence existed. It is a failure of will. The same failure, expressed differently, that runs through every piece of this story.
Five attacks on the Jewish community of north London in six weeks. Three ambulances firebombed outside a synagogue. An arson at a memorial wall. Two Jewish men stabbed on a public street by a man counter terror police believed may be carrying an explosive device. The Chief Rabbi has warned of a sustained campaign. The Met Commissioner Mark Rowley has said publicly he cannot maintain enhanced patrols indefinitely. The Campaign Against Antisemitism has said there is no evidence the Prime Minister has a plan. Every institution with direct knowledge of what is happening is saying the same thing. The government is not doing enough and the community is not safe.