Golders Green ambulance attack: How this London suburb became a home for the UK’s Jewish community

The arson attack on four ambulances in Golders Green early on March 23 was called a “horrific anti-Semitic attack” by prime minister Keir Starmer.

These ambulances were operated by a charity called Hatzola, which means “rescue” in Hebrew, for the benefit of both local Jewish and non-Jewish communities in this area of ​​north London. This is particularly shocking and has further increased the concerns of British Jews, as these ambulances play an important supporting role in ensuring access to healthcare for the good of all.

It’s a community still reeling from the October 2025 attack on Manchester’s Heaton Park Synagogue, which left two people dead on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish religious calendar.

The arson attack is part of a wider wave of international anti-Semitism that has included Norway, the United States and the Netherlands in the past few weeks. This is not an easy time to be a Diaspora Jew.

Those who carried out the attacks came from different origins. Many have been influenced by online hate emanating from ISIS and possibly individuals or groups supporting the hardline Iranian regime.

Counterterrorism police are investigating whether an Iran-linked group was responsible for the arson. Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya (Islamic Movement of the People of the Right Hand) claimed responsibility for the attack, like other terrorist organizations in Europe.

These attacks reflect a complex pattern of hostility towards Jews in the UK, a mix of internal and external hatred. In terms of the latter, there are several examples that can be highlighted, going back a century.

The most well-known of these is the hatred of Jews spread by Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists (BUF) he founded in 1932, and encouraged at least in part by German Nazism.

But overall, antisemitism has had deep internal roots since the re-admission of Jews in the 17th century after a 300-year exile. But although it disturbed the lives of the Jewish minority in times of crisis, it rarely resulted in violent attacks.

Golders Green’s rich history

It is possible to see these roots in Golders Green, which began to develop as a Jewish settlement after the First World War. Although there were some Jews in this then-small suburb in the 19th century, there was little of a formal community.

“Before 1910, only a handful of Jews lived in the community, but by 1915… there were 300 households,” says Pam Fox, social historian of Golders Green’s Jewish community. Growth continued after the first world war and in 1922 the first synagogue, Dunstan Road, was opened. Today the Jewish population is around 8,000, representing approximately 40% of the suburb’s population.

Such crude statistics do not reflect the past and present diversity of the Jewish population. By the early 1930s, more orthodox Jews, some of whom were refugees from Nazism, were establishing different forms of worship in Dunstan Road, more in the form of mainstream orthodox religiosity. By the Second World War there were at least 14,000 Jewish refugees in north-west London (including Golders Green), ranging from the thoroughly secular to the reformist to the deeply orthodox.

After the war there was a further influx of Jewish refugees, including Jewish refugees from Egypt, Hungary and later South Africa, as well as second- and third-generation Jews with origins in Eastern Europe and then London’s East End. Although the Orthodox are now the largest growing group in Golders Green, there is still an incredibly heterogeneous Jewish population.

For many Jews, Golders Green’s vibrant cultural, social and religious life made it a very comfortable place to call home. Even so, there was antisemitism organized in the form of the BUF and, more commonly, in the form of more mundane prejudices.

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The idea that Golders Green is a Jewish suburb today ignores the fact that most of the population is not of that background. It also forgets the many strains of Judaism expressed there. Such nuances are lost in the universal use of those who attack ambulances.

It says a lot about the times when such distinctions were not made; many people hold all Jews responsible for the actions of a particular Israeli government. However, as in other places, Jews in Golders Green have different attitudes towards the problems of the Middle East for both political, cultural and religious reasons. After all, such attacks are, in the words of local Jewish resident Sam Adler, “cynical and cowardly.” If nothing else, they have brought communities together in solidarity and resistance against the ugliness of antisemitism, as in Manchester.