The arson attack in London’s Golders Green, targeting ambulances operated by a Jewish volunteer rescue organization, shatters a basic rule of civilized society. It reaches far beyond the Jewish community of the United Kingdom. It signals something much broader: the erosion of lines that once held.
Ambulances save lives. They do not carry ideology. Anyone who burns them does not protest. They declare that nothing remains off limits. And when the target is Jewish, the meaning is unmistakable.
Burning a Jewish ambulance is not protest. It is permission. Permission for the next target, the next escalation, the next line erased.
This attack fits a pattern that grows more violent, more organized, and more brazen.
In Michigan, a gunman drove a vehicle into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, forced entry, and opened fire. The attack unfolded in the middle of the day at a synagogue with a large preschool. Children were inside. A security guard suffered injuries, and dozens of first responders required treatment after the fire and smoke. No ambiguity surrounded the motive. The target told the story.
Months earlier in Sydney, two gunmen opened fire at a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach, killing 15 people gathered for a public Jewish holiday. The attack stands as the deadliest antisemitic assault in Australia’s modern history.
In recent weeks, attackers firebombed Jewish institutions across Europe, including in Belgium and the Netherlands. The same network claimed responsibility in London. This is not coincidence. It is a coordinated campaign.
The targets are not random. Synagogues, schools, community centers, and ambulances form the backbone of Jewish life. They are visible, rooted, and essential. Attackers strike them to send a message: Jews do not belong.
These attacks do not occur in a vacuum.
Evidence points to networks aligned with the Islamic Republic of Iran directing, enabling, and inspiring violence against Jewish targets across multiple countries. This is not random hatred. It is strategy. Iran uses proxies, cutouts, and deniability to project power beyond its borders. Antisemitic violence now travels with intent, coordination, and purpose.
Antisemitism does not stay contained. It moves. It escalates. It tests how much a society will tolerate before it acts. Once violence replaces rhetoric, the damage does not stop with Jews. It spreads outward and weakens the norms that protect everyone else.
Action, not statements
This moment does not call for statements. It demands action.
First, governments must take responsibility for the security of Jewish institutions. In the United States alone, Jewish communities spend more than $750 million each year on guards, surveillance, hardened infrastructure, and emergency preparedness. These costs reflect threat, not choice. Governments still expect the targets to pay for their own defense.
That is indefensible. Protecting houses of worship, schools, and communal institutions sits at the core of state responsibility. Expand security grants. Increase law enforcement coordination. Ensure rapid response. Treat this as obligation, not option.
Second, leaders must define antisemitism with clarity and enforce legislation dealing with it. Violence does not begin with violence. It begins with language that society excuses, minimizes, or disguises. “Globalize the Intifada.” “From the river to the sea.” These are not slogans in a vacuum. They create permission structures.
Too often, Western leaders recognize the threat only after violence erupts, and even then, respond with hesitation, euphemism, or moral equivocation.
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism gives governments, universities, and civil society a tool to identify modern forms of antisemitism, including those that hide behind political language. Use it. Apply it. Stop pretending that rhetoric and violence exist in separate worlds.
Too many observers treat each attack as an aberration. That instinct invites the next attack. The burning of ambulances in London, the assault on a synagogue in Michigan, and the massacre at Bondi Beach tell a single story.
When attackers target institutions of care, worship, and communal life because they are Jewish, the issue extends beyond antisemitism. It becomes a test of whether democratic societies still enforce their own rules.
This is not a question of awareness. It is a question of will.
History draws a clear line. Societies that fail to defend these boundaries lose them. The threat is no longer in doubt. The only question is whether we will act before the next boundary falls.
The writer is CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. This column does not necessarily reflect the views of the 50 member organizations of the conference.