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‘‘He’s Got a Knife!’: Kosher Supermarket Employees in London Stave Off Attempted Terror Attacker

Staff at a kosher supermarket in north London fend off a knife-wielding assailant. Photo: Screenshot

Police in London on Monday arrested a man who attempted to carry out a knife attack on employees of a kosher supermarket in the heavily Jewish Golders Green section of the British capital.

Video of the attempted assault filmed by witnesses showed the 34-year-old man grappling with two employees outside the store as voices off-camera shouted the warning “He’s got a knife!” in Hebrew.

Ignoring appeals to “go away” and “calm down,” the man began swinging a kitchen knife with a large blade as the employees attempted to fend him off by pushing a shopping cart in his way.

“I told Shomrim to come, but I didn’t see he had a knife,” one employee can be heard saying, referring to a voluntary communal organization that assists victims of antisemitic violence.

The same employee is then heard on the phone making an emergency call to the police. “Somebody outside our store has got a knife,” he is heard saying. As the assailant departs the scene, the employee adds, “He’s going up Hamilton Road. Urgent, urgent.”

The assailant, who has not been named, was later subdued by police officers and Shomrim volunteers and placed under arrest on suspicion of possession of an offensive weapon, criminal damage and racially-aggravated assault.

Jewish people attacked in Golders Green, London – a kosher supermarket.
With a KNIFE, in plain daylight . 2024.

@israel_advocacy pic.twitter.com/z162n9wBzB

— miha schwartzenberg (@miradulescu) January 29, 2024

A statement from the UK-based Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) noted that the man had “demanded that staff answer his questions about events ‘in Palestine’. The staff responded that they did not wish to ‘talk about politics’, at which point the man allegedly brandished a knife.” It added that the “brave staff kept the man at bay using shopping trolleys and called police and Shomrim, who arrived promptly. At this point the man had entered a building and emerged having attempted to change his appearance and donned traditional Muslim garb, at which point he was apprehended.”

One of the store employees later told the London-based Jewish Chronicle that he had defended himself from the assailant using the krav maga, an Israeli martial art, that he learned at school.

“I could see the hate in his eyes. He looked like he came in looking for a fight,” 18-year-old Yosef Chaim Reitman said. “He came to ask about Israel Palestine and seemed to want us to say we were pro-Israel so he had a reason to attack.”

The CAA — which has issued several appeals to police to the prevent weekly pro-Hamas protests in London that have rendered large swathes of the city as no-go areas for members of the Jewish community — said that Monday’s incident “clearly did not take place in a vacuum. We have repeatedly warned of the dangers of hatred going almost unchecked on the streets of London. Those who have failed in their duty to uphold the law and defend British Jews cannot decry this incident without recognizing that they are responsible for creating the perfect environment in which criminal hatred thrives.”

A torrent of antisemitic hate crimes has continued unabated in London for several years. The city recorded an unprecedented number of such incidents in 2023, which massively spiked after Hamas’ massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7. According to an Algemeiner review of MPS data, antisemitic offenses in London increased 202 percent in 2023 through November, with 1,662 incidents eclipsing the full-year totals of 550 in 2022 and 845 in 2021. The MPS began issuing public data on the city’s anti-Jewish offenses in 2018.

Antisemitic hate crimes in London were already on pace to exceed last year’s figures before the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7, which led to a global surge in antisemitic outrages. Between January and September, the MPS recorded 487 incidents. In October and November, city police recorded a staggering 955 hate crimes targeting Jews — twice as many as occurred in the first three-fourths of the year.

Orthodox Jews in the Stamford Hill section of the city have been targeted disproportionately for being visibly Jewish, as shown in a spate of incidents reported by Shomrim, a Jewish organization that monitors antisemitism and also serves as a neighborhood watch group.

In December alone, an Orthodox Jewish man was assaulted by a man riding a bicycle on the sidewalk, two attackers brutally mauled a Jewish woman, and a group of Jewish children was berated by a woman who screamed “I’ll kill all of you Jews. You are murderers!” A similar incident occurred when a man confronted a Jewish shopper and shouted, “You f—king Jew, I will kill you!”

Staff writer Dion Pierre contributed to this report

The post ‘‘He’s Got a Knife!’: Kosher Supermarket Employees in London Stave Off Attempted Terror Attacker first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Security Warning to Israelis Vacationing Abroad Ahead of holidays

A passenger arrives to a terminal at Ben Gurion international airport before Israel bans international flights, January 25, 2021. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

i24 NewsAhead of the Jewish High Holidays, Israel’s National Security Council (NSC) published the latest threat assessment to Israelis abroad from terrorist groups to the public on Sunday, in order to increase the Israeli public’s awareness of the existing terrorist threats around the world and encourage individuals to take preventive action accordingly.

The NSC specified that the warning is an up-to-date reflection of the main trends in the activities of terrorist groups around the world and their impact on the level of threat posed to Israelis abroad during these times, but the travel warnings and restrictions themselves are not new.

“As the Gaza war continues and in parallel with the increasing threat of terrorism, the National Security Headquarters stated it has recognized a trend of worsening and increasing violent antisemitic incidents and escalating steps by anti-Israel groups, to the point of physically harming Israelis and Jews abroad. This is in light of, among other things, the anti-Israel narrative and the negative media campaign by pro-Palestinian elements — a trend that may encourage and motivate extremist elements to carry out terrorist activities against Israelis or Jews abroad,” the statement read.

“Therefore, the National Security Bureau is reinforcing its recommendation to the Israeli public to act with responsibility during this time when traveling abroad, to check the status of the National Security Bureau’s travel warnings (before purchasing tickets to the destination,) and to act in accordance with the travel warning recommendations and the level of risk in the country they are visiting,” it listed, adding that, as illustrated in the past year, these warnings are well-founded and reflect a tangible and valid threat potential.

The statement also emphasized the risk of sharing content on social media networks indicating current or past service in the Israeli security forces, as these posts increase the risk of being marked by various parties as a target. “Therefore, the National Security Council recommends that you do not upload to social networks, in any way, content that indicates service in the security forces, operational activity, or similar content, as well as real-time locations.”

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Israel Intensifies Gaza City Bombing as Rubio Arrives

Displaced Palestinians, fleeing northern Gaza due to an Israeli military operation, move southward after Israeli forces ordered residents of Gaza City to evacuate to the south, in the central Gaza Strip September 14, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa

Israeli forces destroyed at least 30 residential buildings in Gaza City and forced thousands of people from their homes, Palestinian officials said, as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived on Sunday to discuss the future of the conflict.

Israel has said it plans to seize the city, where about a million Palestinians have been sheltering, as part of its declared aim of eliminating the terrorist group Hamas, and has intensified attacks on what it has called Hamas’ last bastion.

The group’s political leadership, which has engaged in on-and-off negotiations on a possible ceasefire and hostage release deal, was targeted by Israel in an airstrike in Doha on Tuesday in an attack that drew widespread condemnation.

Qatar will host an emergency Arab-Islamic summit on Monday to discuss the next moves. Rubio said Washington wanted to talk about how to free the 48 hostages – of whom 20 are believed to be still alive – still held by Hamas in Gaza and rebuild the coastal strip.

“What’s happened, has happened,” he said. “We’re gonna meet with them (the Israeli leadership). We’re gonna talk about what the future holds,” Rubio said before heading to Israel where he will stay until Tuesday.

ABRAHAM ACCORDS AT RISK

He was expected to visit the Western Wall Jewish prayer site in Jerusalem on Sunday with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and hold talks with him during the visit.

US officials described Tuesday’s strike on the territory of a close US ally as a unilateral escalation that did not serve American or Israeli interests. Rubio and US President Donald Trump both met Qatar’s Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani on Friday.

Netanyahu signed an agreement on Thursday to push ahead with a settlement expansion plan that would cut across West Bank land that the Palestinians seek for a state – a move the United Arab Emirates warned would undermine the US-brokered Abraham accords that normalized UAE relations with Israel.

Israel, which blocked all food from entering Gaza for 11 weeks earlier this year, has been allowing more aid into the enclave since late July to prevent further food shortages, though the United Nations says far more is needed.

It says it wants civilians to leave Gaza City before it sends more ground forces in. Tens of thousands of people are estimated to have left but hundreds of thousands remain in the area. Hamas has called on people not to leave.

Israeli army forces have been operating inside at least four eastern suburbs for weeks, turning most of at least three of them into wastelands. It is closing in on the center and the western areas of the territory, where most of the displaced people are taking shelter.

Many are reluctant to leave, saying there is not enough space or safety in the south, where Israel has told them to go to what it has designated as a humanitarian zone.

Some say they cannot afford to leave while others say they were hoping the Arab leaders meeting on Monday in Qatar would pressure Israel to scrap its planned offensive.

“The bombardment intensified everywhere and we took down the tents, more than twenty families, we do not know where to go,” said Musbah Al-Kafarna, displaced in Gaza City.

Israel said it had completed five waves of air strikes on Gaza City over the past week, targeting more than 500 sites, including Hamas reconnaissance and sniper sites, buildings containing tunnel openings and weapons depots.

Local officials, who do not distinguish between militant and civilian casualties, say at least 40 people were killed by Israeli fire across the enclave, a least 28 in Gaza City alone.

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Turkey Warns of Escalation as Israel Expands Strikes Beyond Gaza

Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan speaks during a press conference with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis (not seen) at the Presidential Palace in Ankara, Turkey, May 13, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Umit Bektas

i24 NewsAn Israeli strike targeting Hamas officials in Qatar has sparked unease among several Middle Eastern countries that host leaders of the group, with Turkey among the most alarmed.

Officials in Ankara are increasingly worried about how far Israel might go in pursuing those it holds responsible for the October 7 attacks.

Israel’s prime minister effectively acknowledged that the Qatar operation failed to eliminate the Hamas leadership, while stressing the broader point the strike was meant to make: “They enjoy no immunity,” the government said.

On X, Prime Minister Netanyahu went further, writing that “the elimination of Hamas leaders would put an end to the war.”

A senior Turkish official, speaking on condition of anonymity, summed up Ankara’s reaction: “The attack in Qatar showed that the Israeli government is ready to do anything.”

Legally and diplomatically, Turkey occupies a delicate position. As a NATO member, any military operation or targeted killing on its soil could inflame tensions within the alliance and challenge mutual security commitments.

Analysts caution, however, that Israel could opt for covert measures, operations carried out without public acknowledgement, a prospect that has increased anxiety in governments across the region.

Israeli officials remain defiant. In an interview with Ynet, Minister Ze’ev Elkin said: “As long as we have not stopped them, we will pursue them everywhere in the world and settle our accounts with them.” The episode underscores growing fears that efforts to hunt Hamas figures beyond Gaza could widen regional friction and complicate diplomatic relationships.

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