I had just left my house and driven a short distance when I found my path blocked. The street was teeming with police officers, halting both vehicles and pedestrians in their tracks.

In the distance, an ambulance was visible, and a man was being hurriedly ushered inside. Despite being in Golders Green, a central hub for London’s Jewish community, I clung to the hope that this was merely an altercation between strangers or a minor traffic mishap.

Reflecting on that moment, a part of me instinctively understood it was an anti-Semitic act. It was only moments before my fears were confirmed, and the reality was even more horrifying than anticipated.

Two Jewish individuals had fallen victim to a stabbing in what was described as a terrorist attack, and the person now in the ambulance was the alleged assailant.

Sitting in my car, I was engulfed by a mix of shock, rage, and sorrow.

My wife called, her voice trembling with fear after learning of the incident. Just the previous evening, during her ride back to Golders Green after a night out with friends, their taxi driver had chillingly expressed to these Jewish women his and a friend’s desire to harm Jews. The encounter had understandably unsettled her, and she was now terrified that the driver knew where we lived.

And I, too, know of the growing horror of anti-Semitism in Britain. Just over a week ago I was physically attacked while trying to do my job.

I work as a building inspector, and while photographing the outside of a house in Slough, a man started screaming that I was a ‘dirty Jew’, a ‘baby killer’ and that he wanted to ‘break [my] f***ing jaw.’

Shafiq Rahman, 48, pleaded guilty to racially-aggravated assault after an Moishe, an Orthodox-Jewish man, was punched and called a ‘dirty motherf***** Jew’ during a unprovoked attack

Sir Keir Starmer meets first responders from Shomrim North West London during a visit to Golders Green on April 30, 2026 following the attack 

People attend a Campaign Against Antisemitism ‘national emergency’ rally in Whitehall, central London, on Thursday 

I began to film him, until he knocked my phone out of my hands. It felt like he wanted to hurt me. He only left me alone when a neighbour intervened, warning she would call the police.

I didn’t want to go public about the attack – I am still only using my first name because I don’t want to become a target – but when he hadn’t been arrested after four days, I posted the video on social media.

The footage went viral and within a matter of hours the man – who I discovered was named Shafiq Rahman – had been arrested. A day later he admitted to racially aggravated assault and was given bail pending sentencing.

Whether or not he ends up in jail, I feel no safer. How could I, when he is one man out of thousands who share a vile hatred towards people like me?

Sadly, events like these now feel inevitable in today’s Britain. There is a drumbeat of hatred that has been rising since the October 7 attack in Israel.

For a long time, we have been a community that has been on edge, looking over our shoulders – but now our tormenters have come to our home to hurt us.

I am Charedi, or ultra-orthodox, which means I am visibly Jewish. And that means I’ve experienced anti-Semitism all my life. I still remember, aged seven, walking home with my dad after Shabbat one evening and someone threw eggs at us. They used shout ‘dirty Jews’ at us from cars. Since October 7 that has now changed to ‘baby killers’. But Golders Green has always been somewhere I’ve felt safe.

The past few months have changed that.

Only weeks before the frightening stabbing incident, I heard several bangs in the middle of the night. When I opened my window to see what was going on, I saw plumes of smoke.

I soon found out that ambulances belonging to Hatzola, the Jewish emergency service, had been attacked. Four men have been charged with torching them: Hamza Iqbal, 20, Rehan Khan, 19, Judex Atshatshi, 18, and a 17-year-old boy. Just another a day in the life of our community. My father’s parents fled Nazi Germany while my mother’s came a generation earlier from Eastern Europe. Britain took us in, and while we have always faced anti-Semitism as a community, we have, on the whole, had happy and safe lives even as visible Jews.

Golders Green, which houses the synagogue I go to and the school my children attend, was a cocoon. We always knew the outside world could be a bit dangerous but it was only after October 7, 2023, that it started closing in.

We all saw the celebrations after that atrocity – the worst Jewish pogrom since the Holocaust – on the streets of London and it broke something inside me.

While the Charedi community has a sometimes complicated relationship with Israel – a secular state on holy land – it is also the Jewish home. Make no mistake, their chants were about the death of Jews.

Very quickly, this hatred came to Golders Green. Within a few days of October 7, a shop had been vandalised and ‘Free Palestine’ daubed on the walls. Hostage posters were torn down. Not enough to make headlines, but enough to put all of us on edge.

My daughters’ school has long had blacked-out gates out front, as well as private security guards. But I now worry about my girls constantly.

So what now? There are already calls for more to be spent on our security. The police should have been quicker in stopping the suspect in Wednesday’s stabbing incident in Golders Green, some say. Officers should be more visible.

Moishe has told of how he was threatened with physical violence, saying ‘I’ll break your f****** jaw’ before accusing the man of ‘killing kids in Palestine’

People hold up placards, which read ‘Jew-hate is now a national emergency’, during a protest organised by the Campaign Against Antisemitism outside Downing Street

I disagree. I don’t want to see police officers lining my local high street. I don’t want our schools and synagogues to become armed fortresses.

I want the threat removed: the marches, the online hate, what is being preached in the mosques, the anti-Semitic bile taught in schools and universities. As long as we tolerate and accept these things, then we will simply be chasing after the next attack. And then the one after that.

But it feels like our government can’t even name the issue for what it is. They have failed us.

For too long, I have tried to tell myself that we will be fine. I now know that’s not true.

Some friends are already making plans to leave. Others, like me, argue that we should stay. I ask myself constantly if I’m being naive: after all, I know that our families are only here because they knew when to run from danger.

After the knife attack, I picked up my daughters from school. Police were everywhere and the girls wanted to know what had happened. I told them a bad man had hurt two others. How can you explain to a five and seven-year-old that there are people who believe we shouldn’t exist?

I have taken up self-defence so that I can protect myself and my family if anyone tries to hurt us. And I think about moving somewhere safer every day.

Unless something changes – dramatically – I don’t think Jews have a future in Britain.