Terror chief: Threat to Jews and Israeli interests remains high

The head of UK counter terrorism police has described the significant pressure on those protecting Britain from significant threats, describing the caseload as being like “juggling many high priority balls in the air”, and confirming that “the physical threat against the Jewish community and Israeli interests is high”. 

Speaking at New Scotland Yard today, Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor, who heads the CTP, said that there were currently more than 800 live counter terror cases, and that national security cases had risen by 50 percent since last year. He also pointed to the current “severe” threat level for the country – last seen in November 2021 – confirming that this was not in response to a specific threat but rather due to the general rise in risk.

Taylor described both extreme right wing behaviour and Islamist terrorism, saying that the latter “remains the single biggest threat in the UK”, but confirming that “antisemitism is the poison thread sewn through all these hate ideologies…and once those seeds are sown, they rarely stay dormant.”

Taylor said that he was often asked whether the threat from ISIS had returned, but that in reality “it has never gone away”, and spoke of there being a “growing ambition to attack the West”. Earlier this year, two men were sentenced for their roles in planning an ISIS inspired plot designed to carry out a mass terror attack on Manchester’s Jewish community.

Taylor’s colleague, Counter Terror Police Senior National Coordinator Vicki Evans, described threats from nations with hostile intent towards the UK, including China, Russia and the Iranian regime.

With regard to the latter, she referred to the court case last week, where a judge confirmed that an attack on an Iran International journalist in the UK appeared to have been directly ordered by the regime, and said that the individuals who carried out the attack would be arrested accordingly.

“The use of proxies is now the number one tactic”, by such countries, she said.

“They’re cheap, replaceable, and promises of protection disappear like sandcastle at high tide” once a job is carried out.

Yesterday the National Security (State Threats) Act, received Royal Assent, leading to speculation that the Iranian regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) could be banned within days.

Last year, a significant number of attacks were perpetrated against Jewish community targets, with widespread speculation that these incidents were all connected and orchestrated by the Iranian regime. Evans said that counter terror police were still investigating, and that the idea that the attacks were linked and orchestrated by a foreign power “remains an active line of inquiry”.

The pair stressed that “the approach to online harms needs to be revisited”, which echoes a similar call by a variety of groups, including the Antisemitism Policy Trust, ahead of what seems likely to be the ascension of Andy Burnham to become Prime Minister later this month.

They described how what they referred to as “lawful but awful” content is rising, with “sadistic online groups” in which members sought to outdo each other with regards to cybercrime, fraud, extremism, extreme violence, child sexual abuse and terrorism”. The need to put “pressure on tech organisations” to cooperate and support investigations into such online behaviour.

Both senior officers stressed the essential need for vigilance from the general public, and the importance of relaying suspicious behaviour to the authorities.