Lone-actor terrorism has replaced organized, centralized extremism in the UK, Dave Rich, head of policy at the Community Security Trust and leading expert on left-wing antisemitism, told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday.
CST is the charity that protects British Jews from terrorism and antisemitism. It has held charitable status since 1994 and manages around 2,000 dedicated volunteers and over 100 staff members.
The conversation came just days after the newly formed Shi’ite-linked group Ashab al-Yamin allegedly carried out an arson attack on four Hatzalah ambulances in north London.
Ashab al-Yamin appeared on the scene in recent weeks in relation to several attacks, including an explosion at a Liège synagogue in Belgium, a Jewish school in Amsterdam, and a synagogue in Rotterdam. It is believed to be linked to the Islamic Resistance (Iranian-backed Shi’ite Islamist factions) in Iraq. However, some have hypothesized that it is a collection of amateur lone actors.
“Today, it tends to be lone actors, but still, people who are operating out of a broad subculture or a broader ideological movement are not psychologically on their own, even if operationally they’re doing it on their own,” Rich said.
He pointed out that much of modern Islamist terrorism is actually Islamic State-inspired rather than directed by state actors. The perpetrators are people who follow the ideology, consume the material online, and work themselves up to committing an act: “There’s not some controller in a base in a foreign country telling them what to do.”
Rich said the same is true for most far-right and far-left terrorism. Both involve lone actors, including “some very young people,” who are part of the broader online environment. This was the case with the attack on two Israeli embassy workers at the Jewish Museum in Washington, DC, by Elias Rodriguez, who came out of far-left anti-Zionist politics but acted on his own.
Returning to Ashab al-Yamin, Rich explained that the standard modus operandi of these Iranian-inspired or Iran-directed attacks tends to be through mobilizing local criminals.
“It’s far harder to intervene and anticipate beforehand, because if they’re just putting out adverts on the dark Web for ‘here’s a certain amount of money to go and burn someone’s car,’ there’s loads of people who would take that money, and it’s very hard to track them.”
Nevertheless, Rich said, to a certain extent, this type of “gig economy” terrorism indicates “a decline in their capabilities internationally,” meaning that the “potential lethality is reduced compared to what they did in Buenos Aires 30 years ago.”
“If you look at Iranian terrorism against Jewish communities around the world in years gone by, such as the AMIA bombing in Argentina or the Burgas bombing in Bulgaria, they were carried out by either Iranian operatives, Hezbollah operatives, or people who’d been trained, who were ideologically and operationally trained by Hezbollah or by Iran to carry out these attacks. Whereas now, there are quite a few cases around the world where evidence has emerged showing [Iran] is paying local criminals who aren’t ideologically aligned at all.”
Iran or other threat actors often hire individuals to carry out espionage on foreign targets. Spotting such hostile reconnaissance, surveillance, and suspicious behavior at Jewish locations is a key part of the work CST does, because it’s a way to prevent an attack or intercept or disrupt attack planning before it actually happens.
Last year, CST received around 750 reports of suspicious behavior and information gathering at Jewish community locations, a lot of which turned out to be innocent, but some are more connected to hostile activity, Rich said.
“Working out which are the serious ones is difficult, but that’s a really important part of the work we do, because we know that almost all terrorists will do some sort of information gathering about a target, either in person or online, very often both.”
Last week, British prosecutors charged two Iranian nationals with spying for Iran by carrying out surveillance of people and locations linked to the Jewish community.
Because of the threat of espionage, CST works hard to educate the Jewish community about being more aware of threats.
“We tell them, if you see anything suspicious, anything out of place, then report it. If you’re ever unsure, report it. Let us make the decision about whether it’s serious or innocent, but just always report it.”
Rich explained that, generally speaking, people who go to synagogue every week, parents who drop off at school all the time, know more than anyone else if someone looks out of place.
“It could be someone who’s hanging around for too long, who’s paying unusual amounts of attention to the building, asking questions, taking photos.”
Ideally, CST wants suspicious behavior reported immediately, because this gives the police time to get there and stop and question the person. “If you see someone potentially collecting intelligence or information on a Jewish location, call 999, call CST straightaway, and we will call the police.”
The Post questioned whether Jewish communities outside of London and Manchester are facing greater vulnerabilities because the focus, especially from the government, is more on metropolitan areas.
“We put a lot of effort into making sure those smaller communities are protected. There’s a government grant for commercial security guards at schools and synagogues and other buildings. That is now up to £28 million a year to pay for security guards that are hired from private companies.”
CST manages this grant on behalf of the government. Understandably, most of that is concentrated in London and Manchester, but a lot of it is spent in Gateshead, for example, as well as smaller communities. CST also has a control center which takes CCTV feeds from hundreds of Jewish buildings around the country, enabling it to monitor what’s happening in lots of places where there might be only one synagogue.
Prioritizing London and Manchester is logical, not just because they have the largest Jewish communities, but also because that is where a lot of the hostile attention is focused. However, Rich said “the pattern of anti-Jewish terrorism is they don’t tend to travel very far; they tend to attack their local target wherever they live.” Therefore, with the proliferation of terrorists who are radicalized online and connect to each other through social media, “they can live anywhere.”
Prior to the Manchester attack on Yom Kippur, the previous attack on a synagogue that had been categorized as a terrorist incident in the UK was in Exeter.
“No one would have ever predicted Exeter, but it’s just because the neo-Nazi, the white supremacist, who decided he wanted to burn down his local synagogue happened to live in Exeter.”
On July 21, 2018, Tristan Morgan tried to set fire to the historic Exeter Synagogue. His plan was to try to break through the window, pour in a load of petrol and set fire to it. CST, however, had put shatterproof film on the window, as it had done for most Jewish buildings in the country, so Morgan could only make a tiny little hole. As he poured the liquid accelerant inside and set it alight, he accidentally caused a backfire which engulfed him in flames and burned off his hair.
Following his arrest, Morgan told police, “Please tell me that synagogue is burning to the ground. If not, it’s poor preparation.”
Antisemitism appearing in mainstream life post-October 7
Before October 7, radicalization of lone actors like Morgan and the threat from extremist groups were the bigger threat. However, in the post-October 7 landscape, antisemitism is “popping up in mainstream life,” Rich explained.
“It’s not just on university campuses, where you’ve always had antisemitism of certain sorts. It’s in schools. It’s in hospitals. It’s in workplaces. It’s on the streets and at protests.”
The Post raised the example of a controversial art exhibition named “Drawings Against Genocide” by British artist and art critic Matthew Collings, currently on view at Joseph Wales Studios in Margate. Collings – who describes himself as a communist – produced around 100 drawings featuring overtly antisemitic imagery. One depicts the owner of Sotheby’s, French-Israeli businessman Patrick Drahi, eating babies alive. Multiple drawings depict Jews as devils with horns or standing on skulls with messages like “we love death.”
Kent Police told the Post that “no criminal offenses were identified” at the exhibition.
The more coded the antisemitism is, the harder it is for law enforcement, Rich pointed out.
“I think a lot of your average police officers might struggle to understand it and get past the sort of very thin veneer of anti-Israel framing. Those pictures of that Margate exhibition are so obviously antisemitic. It’s demons dripping blood from their mouth.”
“But there’s also another issue here, which is that most of the antisemitism and the incitement that is around – we can’t police our way out of it.
“These are societal attitudes,” he continued. “This is an issue for civic society. Why is this art gallery hosting that exhibition? Why did the local council advertise it on their website? Why is the local community not treating this as a racist exhibition in the way they would if this guy was from the far Right? One of the problems, really, since October 7 is that civil society’s response to antisemitism has been really poor.”
While Rich said the police and government have been trying hard to do the right things, the issue is that huge parts of civil society have “either been completely absent or are actually part of the problem.”
Ultimately, it seems the battle against modern extremism may depend less on stopping attackers and more on confronting the ideas that inspire them.