LONDON — Since the terrorist attack on a Manchester, England, synagogue on Yom Kippur that left two congregants dead, British politicians have redoubled their efforts to reassure the country’s Jewish community, which has been increasingly concerned about security issues amid widespread anti-Israel sentiment that has grown in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks and ensuing war in Gaza. 

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer promised to do “everything” in his power to protect the Jewish community, including the recent approval of £10 million ($13 million) in emergency funds to provide greater security.

But while the added financial resources for more guards and extra security has been welcomed by the U.K.’s Jewish community, there remains considerable unease and hostility toward the government, something that became starkly apparent the day after Yom Kippur.

When David Lammy, the country’s deputy prime minister, attended a vigil close to Heaton Park synagogue the day after the attack, he was booed and heckled with cries of “Shame on you” and “Blood on your hands.” 

Lammy was foreign secretary when Britain said it intended to recognize a Palestinian state earlier this year. The move was formally announced by Starmer last month, alongside similar action taken by countries including France, Australia and Canada. 

In his previous role, Lammy imposed restrictions on British arms sales to Israel and twice summoned Israel’s ambassador to the U.K. to criticize him over Israel’s handling of the Gaza war. Lammy and his parliamentary colleagues have also been criticized by the Jewish community for not doing enough to protect them by allowing hostile anti-Israel marches to proceed week after week in British cities. 

“What David Lammy and his government have done has allowed this to happen,” Melanie, who asked only to be identified by her first name, told Jewish Insider. The 42-year-old nurse, who was among those who booed Lammy, attended the vigil with her husband and three children, all of whom attend a Jewish school close to the targeted synagogue.  

The angry outburst included cries of “Go to Palestine, leave us alone,” and “You have allowed Jew hatred in Manchester.” 

“What right did that man have to be there? That was probably the worst person they [the government] could have sent,” said Melanie. “I don’t know who made that decision but it was the wrong decision.”

As in many Western European countries, incidents of antisemitism in the U.K. have skyrocketed over the last two years. In its latest report, the Community Security Trust (CST), a charity that works towards Britain’s Jewish communal safety and monitors antisemitism, revealed that 1,521 antisemitic incidents were reported in the first half of 2025. This was the second highest level ever recorded for that period, just behind the same timeframe in 2024.

Among the incidents in recent months have been synagogues desecrated with excrement, the vandalism of a rabbi’s home with a swastika and an incident in which visibly Jewish teenagers were shot at with an air rifle. 

Meanwhile last week, soccer club Aston Villa announced that it was banning fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv from attending a match at their stadium next month. The decision came after police in Birmingham, Britain’s second-largest city and home to a substantial Muslim population, warned it could not guarantee fans’ safety, leading the Israeli football club to announce on Monday that it would decline any tickets offered to its fans out of concern for their wellbeing and safety. The U.K. government said it was “deeply saddened” by Maccabi Tel Aviv’s decision.

Writing in The Guardian in the wake of the Manchester attack, Dave Rich, director of policy at CST, said, “Antisemitism has been allowed to rise in an unacceptable way for far too long. Last year’s official hate-crime statistics showed that a Jewish person in Britain was 12 times more likely to be the victim of a religious hate crime than someone from any other faith background. Calls for violence against Jews, or Israelis, or Zionists, online and on our streets, have become normalised in parts of our politics.”

The U.K.’s recognition of a Palestinian state was also met with concern over the message the move conveyed about the country’s priorities around the war in Gaza. 

A survey of over 4,800 British Jews conducted prior to the Manchester attack by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, a U.K.-based Jewish research organization, found that Jews’ sense of “ambient antisemitism” in society, including hostile media coverage, online commentary and microaggressions, had increased substantially — 45% of respondents said they experienced it “frequently” or “regularly” in 2025, as opposed to only 8% of British Jews before the Oct. 7 attacks. 

In a statement released after the Manchester, attack CST described what happened on Yom Kippur as “the kind of terrorist attack that we have prepared for over many years.” 

That is cold comfort for many in the community. “If somebody decided to ram a car along the pavement as the kids were heading into school, they would be hitting lots of kids and lots of parents,” Melanie, the nurse who attended the vigil, said.

“We don’t have any thoughts that the government is going to protect us because they haven’t done so far,” she said. “It’s terrifying for the kids to know this is the world they’re growing up in.

Is there any place for Jews in this country anymore? If things carry on the way they’re going, I don’t think so because we’re just targeted all the time.”

Lord Katz, a government frontbencher in the House of Lords, told JI that the government has been “acutely aware of the increasing fear and anxiety of the community over the past two years.” 

“Whatever your views on the Israeli government, it’s always been clear that that shouldn’t impact on the way that British Jews live their lives and the government’s commitment to working with the CST and other communal bodies to ensure they have enough funding and the right legal measures in place to tackle antisemitism is very very clear and is underlined by lots of recent activity,” he said. 

“In the long term, though, it has to be about tackling the cause and not just the symptoms. It has to be done through education and building community cohesion and there’s no easy route to that.”

Katz added: “This isn’t a party political issue — whether it’s attending football matches, wearing Jewish insignia, using the NHS [National Health Service] or feeling safe on our streets and campuses, the Government knows British Jews are fearful and will protect our rights, liberties and way of life.”

Journalist Nicole Lampert, who has been outspoken about antisemitism in the U.K., said that antisemitism began to flourish under the previous Conservative government. The marches have been taking place since the start of the war when Rishi Sunak and his Conservative government was still in power. 

She said: “There are many people to blame, but of course, the people that are in control of things are the government,” she said, adding that Labour “came with a history of antisemitism,” referring to the party’s previous leadership under Jeremy Corbyn, who had a long record of anti-Israel and antisemitic rhetoric.

In 2020, an investigation by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) found that under Corbyn the party had a culture “which, at best, did not do enough to prevent antisemitism and, at worst, could be seen to accept it”.

Lampert said, “Many of the people that were in the cabinet, including Keir Starmer, had been in the cabinet with Jeremy Corbyn and had told us to vote for Jeremy Corbyn and had refused to really speak out against antisemitism.”

“Although Keir Starmer said ‘I’m going to clear this party of antisemitism’ [in his leadership campaign], in some ways he used antisemitism as a blunt tool to just get rid of the far left in his party,” she added.

“They didn’t use it as an opportunity for a teachable moment as to what antisemitism actually is and what they’d done wrong,” Lampert said. “That was really frustrating because antisemitism is complex. If you had explained ‘this is why you’re antisemitic’ or ‘this was what was wrong,’ that would’ve been better.” 

Alex Hearn, co-director of the campaign group Labour Against Antisemitism, agreed.

“Time after time we’ve seen that it’s easier to remove Jews rather than to challenge racism,” he said. “It’s easier to erase the people who cooperate rather than challenge the vocal and unlawful minority. 

“The places we’re allowed to go safely are getting narrower and narrower. Don’t go to central London during marches, don’t walk down the streets looking visibly Jewish, don’t go on social media. And it’s just growing and growing, whether it be comedy clubs or now football matches — our world is getting smaller,” Hearn said. “Then what we’re hearing from our government is that they say the right things when they have to and we find ourselves applauding the sentiments, but wondering where the meaningful action is.”

Hearn added: “Keir Starmer has announced increased security funding to the Jewish community, but other things show why that’s necessary: because the authorities consistently allow racists to run riot on our streets. So we’re building higher and higher fences but we’re not addressing the issue. The most high fences can’t keep everyone out, as we’ve learned from Manchester.”

Dovid Lewis, the rabbi of Bowdon synagogue in south Manchester, said that, like many others, he had been “shaken and shocked” but “not surprised” by the Yom Kippur attack. “Antisemitism is insidious throughout society at the moment,” he said. 

“There’s a reason why we have guards outside shul,” he said. “It’s not because we’re paranoid. It’s because there’s a credible threat.”

One of the worshippers at Lewis’ synagogue told him that following the attack she felt most insulted by an interview in which Starmer said that Jews “should feel comfortable in my country.”

The rabbi responded, “We don’t need to feel comfortable in the prime minister’s country — this is our country. I was born here, my parents were born here, my grandparents were born here.”

“You can’t declare [support for] a Palestinian state on Erev Rosh Hashanah and declare at the Labour Party conference, between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, that Israel is committing genocide, then scratch your head and wonder why somebody named Jihad Al-Shamie did what he did several days later,” he said. “There is a cause and an effect.”

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee privately briefed lawmakers on the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday morning on the security and political situation in the West Bank and the war in Gaza.

The briefing was organized by Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), who chairs the subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa, in response to efforts by France and other U.S. allies to recognize a Palestinian state. Despite a focus on the West Bank, attendees indicated that the briefing did not provide specific answers on any U.S. policy toward a potential Israeli move to annex all or part of the territory.

Lawler told Jewish Insider the briefing had included a “thorough discussion with the ambassador about Judea and Samaria and the challenges and the opportunities,” using the biblical term for the West Bank preferred by the Israeli government and utilized by the Foreign Affairs Committee.

“Given the insistence on the part of the French and other Europeans to recognize a Palestinian state, I thought it was important for my colleagues to have a greater understanding of what we’re actually talking about with respect to Judea and Samaria, or the West Bank, and how it is actually governed post-Oslo,” Lawler continued, referring to the peace accords brokered in the 1990s.

He noted that a majority of the West Bank is categorized as Area C, controlled by Israel, and said many people do not understand that.

Asked whether the group had discussed a potential declaration of Israeli sovereignty in that area, Lawler responded, “No, we had a broad discussion on the entirety of the situation there.”

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) said he does not “think there’s any support in the United States for unilateral action by Israel to annex any territory.” Some congressional Republicans have indicated support for such a policy.

“[Huckabee] is against the unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state, and I urged [him] to be equally vocal against unilateral actions by settlers or even the Israeli government designed to prevent a Palestinian state. If you’re against this unilateral, you’re against that unilateral,” Sherman told JI.

He added that Huckabee’s “dedication to the hostages is palpable. You can feel it. You can see it.”

Asked whether the group had discussed potential Israeli annexation of the West Bank, Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL) declined to address specific details of the closed-door briefing but said, “there was broad discussion on a lot of different issues, but we didn’t go in-depth into anything specifically.”

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Wednesday that members of the Israeli government are formulating plans for annexation of the West Bank, potentially including all but six large Palestinian cities in the West Bank, with the goal of claiming “maximum territory and minimum population.” Israel is set to hold high-level discussions on the subject this week.

An envoy for the United Arab Emirates told The Times of Israel this week that “annexation would be a red line” for the UAE and would “foreclose the idea of regional integration and be the death knell of the two-state solution.”

The UAE joined the Abraham Accords in 2020 in part to halt then-pending plans for annexation of the West Bank.

A new Gallup poll underscores the degree to which Israel’s security is now dependent on support from President Donald Trump and the Republican Party, the Jewish state having drained much of its political capital from both Democrats and independents amid the ongoing war against Hamas in Gaza and the resulting humanitarian crisis.

The numbers are clear: Support for Israel is now becoming a partisan issue after the Jewish state enjoyed decades of bipartisan support in the United States. Anti-Israel activists on the left, looking to exploit the moment, are working to win over Democratic lawmakers to their side — and are finding some unlikely allies moving in their direction amid the sustained pressure.

The data is sobering: Only about one-third of Americans now support Israel’s military action in Gaza, with 60% disapproving. At the beginning of the war, exactly half of Americans supported Israel’s war against Hamas. The drop-off has come entirely from Democrats (36% supported in November 2023, while 8% do now) and independents (47% supported in November 2023 while 25% support now). 

Among Republicans, however, support for Israel’s military efforts has remained significant. The exact same share of Republicans who backed Israel’s war against Hamas in November 2023 (71%) continue to support Israel’s efforts today. Trump’s decision to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities has, if anything, bolstered GOP support for Israel and undermined the isolationist and small anti-Israel faction within the party.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s close relationship with Trump, a partnership that has led to major policy successes, like the successful, coordinated attacks against Iran’s nuclear program, has nonetheless also played a role in the growing partisanship. Netanyahu, for the first time, is viewed unfavorably by a majority of Americans — with Democrats now registering more overt disapproval of the Israeli leader since Trump reentered office.

The Gallup polling shows there was already soft support for Israel among Democrats before the war began, with majorities of Democrats opposed to the Jewish state’s efforts at self-defense just weeks after the Oct. 7 attacks. That said, a clear majority of Democratic lawmakers maintained their support for Israel’s war against Hamas, with only a relatively small faction calling for ceasefires before Hamas’ leadership and terror infrastructure could be degraded.

But there are signs that some of the more mainstream voices are succumbing to the anti-Israel shifts within the party’s base. Over half of Senate Democrats supported a Bernie Sanders-led resolution last night that would block U.S. arms sales to Israel — up from the 15 Democrats who voted for a similar measure back in April.  Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), a pragmatic Democratic senator, who was absent for the vote, sounded open to cutting off “offensive” military aid to Israel. Sen. Angus King (I-ME), a pro-Israel independent who caucuses with Democrats, changed his tune and called for ending all military aid to Israel this week.

What’s alarming is how some of this consuming anti-Israel sentiment among Democrats is showing some signs of evolving into, at least, a tolerance of antisemitism. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro received blowback from the left for simply calling out New York City Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani over failing to condemn “globalize the intifada” rhetoric. Slotkin felt the need, while on an anti-Israel podcast, to pander that she’s a Jewish senator who wasn’t backed by Jewish groups. Progressive spaces are becoming increasingly inhospitable to Jews, at least those who don’t renounce their support for a Jewish state.

The many liberal-minded, pro-Israel Jewish Democrats have felt increasingly homeless politically as a result of the shifts within the party — and the accommodation of views that, until very recently, have been beyond the political pale. If the party’s reaction to its 2024 defeat is to tack even further leftward and alienate core parts of their coalition, it could well be lurching towards its own McGovern moment in the future.

Leo Terrell, senior counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights, said he is intent on eliminating what he called “the Jewish tax” in an address on Sunday to hundreds of Jewish college students gathered for the Israel on Campus Coalition’s three-day annual leadership summit held in Washington.

“For those who don’t know what the Jewish tax is — for you to have this convention, for you to walk your child to a synagogue down the street — you have to pay for extra security,” said Terrell, who heads the Department of Justice’s antisemitism task force. “It makes no sense. It’s unfair. It’s wrong. I find it offensive that it’s being allowed throughout this country. I’m doing everything I can to eliminate it.” 

Terrell’s comments came as the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced last month that it had awarded $94.4 million in security grant funding to a total of 512 Jewish organizations nationwide. 

Terrell, who wore a baseball cap embroidered with the name “Hadar Goldin,” an IDF soldier abducted and killed by Hamas in 2014 whose body remains held by the terrorist group, shared that he has faced “fights and arguments” with some colleagues over how to strategically address antisemitism. He said that some colleagues have called to “cut a deal, to move on,” an apparent reference to the Trump administration’s recent settlement with Columbia University following a monthslong battle over the Ivy League university’s record dealing with antisemitism. 

“I will not compromise,” Terrell said. “No, how can you ask a group [to] compromise freedom? There is no compromise on your equality, your freedom, you have the right to go to schools, to walk down the streets and not be worried and not be afraid.” 

Terrell, a former civil rights attorney and a conservative media personality, told the crowd that eradicating antisemitism is a “full-time commitment,” one that he’s decided to take on in part due to Jewish involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. 

“I’m not a Jewish American. I’m a Black American. I also understand the history of this great country. Before becoming a lawyer, I was a school teacher. I grew up in the ‘60s,” Terrell said. “I remember Jewish Americans walking hand in hand with Black Americans making sure they got their civil rights.” 

ASPEN, Colo. — Retired Gen. David Petraeus, the former director of the CIA and head of U.S. Central Command, said Friday at the Aspen Security Forum that, in the post Oct. 7, 2023 environment, Israel will no longer tolerate threats to its security throughout the region, including a resumption of Iran’s nuclear program.

Petraeus said, “We have to step back a little bit and recognize that Israel’s strategic calculation is very, very different from before Oct. 7, and that’s a big deal for the region,” explaining that Israel will no longer allow threats to metastasize anywhere in the Middle East. 

He added that Iran must understand that it is vulnerable and that no Israeli leader will allow it to resume its push for a nuclear weapon.

“[The Iranians] have to recognize that if they make another move, they’re going to get hammered once again,” Petraeus said. “And I don’t think that an Israeli prime minister, even if it’s not Bibi Netanyahu, will allow the Iranians to proceed down the path to a nuclear device.”

He predicted that Russia would not be helpful to Iran in replacing its Russian-manufactured air-defense systems that Israel destroyed, since it doesn’t have sufficient systems to protect itself from Ukraine’s counter-strikes at this point.

Petraeus argued that Iran’s future direction and leadership will depend on what sort of leader or leadership structure succeeds Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — whether the country remains ruled by a hardline religious cleric or whether a new body, potentially one dominated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, emerges.

“You can actually entertain at least a notion that, since they control 30 to 40% of the economy, that the Revolutionary Guard Corps says, ‘Hey, why are we doing all this stuff? We could be living high on the hog and stop getting bombed and our headquarters getting taken out, us individually targeted, if we just cut loose Hezbollah, and all these others. Who cares about this nuclear stuff? What has this brought us now?’” Petraeus said.

Journalist Kim Ghattas, speaking alongside Petraeus, said that “this 40 year arc of the Islamic Revolution is coming to an end,” citing knowledge from an unnamed Western diplomat previously based in Iran, “but exactly how it ends we just don’t know yet.”

She argued that the “inconclusive” nature of the Israel-Iran war “has actually complicated matters internally and in the region” and may allow the Iranian regime to recalibrate and consolidate power. She suggested that the IRGC could take charge and transform the country into more of a military dictatorship, sidelining the mullahs.

“I think that in the medium term, we’re looking at a more oppressive, more militaristic Iranian regime,” Ghattas said.

And she predicted that Iran would push ahead with its nuclear program as its only option for deterrence.

Ghattas also said that the fact that Iran had managed to survive the Israeli attacks had complicated efforts to sideline Hezbollah in Lebanon, sending a message to the group that it should hold out; she said that Hezbollah is unlikely to disarm without instruction from Iran, and that it would require political concessions in order to do so.

“We had a really golden opportunity at the beginning of the year, when everything was in flux, Hezbollah was very much on the back foot. [Syrian dictator Bashar al-]Assad was gone. Gaza had a ceasefire in January,” Ghattas said. “This was the moment to strike with a grand political vision, diplomatic vision, for the region. Now, everybody’s recalibrating. Iran is trying to see how it can get a foothold stronger again, into Lebanon, even into Syria.”

Petraeus said that he supports Israel’s objectives it has laid out in Gaza — destroying Hamas, removing it from governance and freeing the hostages — “but I’ve said publicly from the very beginning and written about it as well, that I just don’t think they’re going about it the right way.”

He said Israel should be pursuing a “comprehensive civil-military counterinsurgency campaign — clear, hold, build and transition,” including establishing security and governance measures in Gaza as the campaign proceeds and allowing Gazan Palestinians return to their homes.

“And that requires a fourth objective, which has never been stated, and that is to provide a better future for the Palestinian people in Gaza without Hamas in their lives,” he continued.

He said that, though Hamas has been degraded, it still has the largest armed force in Gaza and would reemerge as the dominant force in a vacuum, despite Israel’s arming of some Palestinian clans in Gaza.

“I’m really worried about what is the future of Gaza, for which there’s been no real vision provided for what life of the Palestinian people will look like,” Petraues said.

The retired general indicated that he’s optimistic about Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa, explaining, “We believe that he understands the need for a government that has representation from all of these different elements and not only assures majority rule, but also ensures minority rights.”

Ghattas warned that the ongoing Israeli military campaign in Syria risks spawning a revitalized terrorist threat in Lebanon and a renewed threat from Syria.

She said she supports the Trump administration’s policy in opening a door to the new Syrian government, but said that the U.S. has “gone a little bit too far in embracing al-Sharaa.”

“Great about lifting the sanctions, but you still need to breathe down his neck, because international support does not translate into national legitimacy, yet, and he’s not done enough in terms of national legitimacy,” Ghattas said.

The panelists also discussed Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman’s rise to power and vision for the region.

Petraeus said that bin Salman had overhauled a slow and indecisive government to consolidate power.

“There’s never been a consolidation of power like we see there, and there’s never been someone with the kind of vision that he has put forward as well,” Petraeus said. “You can ask if some of that is beyond realistic. … But he knows that.”

He said that bin Salman’s initiative has established Saudi Arabia as one of the key centers of power in the region, alongside the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, supplanting traditional power-players like Egypt.

Ghattas said that bin Salman had evolved over time and “transformed, for the better, the lives of millions of young Saudis.”

“I think the opportunities are great, but I think Saudi Arabia, which wanted to establish relations with Israel before Oct. 7, is finding itself with a conundrum that it cannot solve on its own without pressure from the United States on Israel,” Ghattas said, “which is [that] it is not going to reach out to Israel anymore unless they get a promise of a Palestinian state. The bar for that has risen tremendously.”

A coalition of 46 Jewish organizations issued a joint statement on Thursday urging additional action from the federal government to address antisemitism in the United States following the killing of two Israeli Embassy staffers outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, and particularly expanding funding for a variety of programs to protect the Jewish community.

“The rising level of anti-Jewish incitement, which inevitably leads to violent acts like the one in Washington, DC yesterday, requires governmental action commensurate with the level of danger,” the letter reads.

The demands include a call to massively expand funding for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program to $1 billion, from its current level of $274.5 million, in addition to $200 million in supplemental funding also expected to be released soon. The new request is double the $500 million request from Jewish groups in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks and the request recently submitted by a bipartisan coalition of House members.

The letter further said the NSGP process should be “made more flexible and accessible,” describing it currently as “cumbersome and lack[ing] transparency.”

The groups also called for additional funding for security at Jewish institutions, for the FBI to expand its intelligence operations and counter-domestic terrorism operations and for local law enforcement to be empowered to protect Jewish establishments.

“The demands on local and state law enforcement far outpace their capacity to meet the need, which disproportionately affects targeted communities like the American Jewish community,” the letter says, of the need for additional funding for state and local law enforcement.

The groups also urged the federal government to “aggressively prosecute antisemitic hate crimes and extremist violence in accordance with the law” and to hold online platforms including social media and gaming sites “accountable for amplification of antisemitic hate, glorification of terrorism, extremism, disinformation, and incitement.”

The letter describes the murders as “the direct consequence of rising antisemitic incitement in places such as college campuses, city council meetings, and social media that has normalized hate and emboldened those who wish to do harm.”

Signatories to the letter include major national Jewish organizations including the American Jewish Committee, Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Jewish Federations of North America, Anti-Defamation League and AIPAC, as well as groups representing a wide political and religious cross section of the Jewish community.