A former Shin Bet member warned that the Muslim Brotherhood and allied groups embed themselves in universities, city centers, and charities—using these networks to spread extremist ideology and normalize antisemitism.
By Yaakov Lappin, JNS
Jewish communities in Britain and across Europe continue to face an acute security threat from a myriad of radical Islamic terrorist elements, even as large anti-Israel street demonstrations decrease in the wake of the current Gaza truce.
Two Islamic State supporters in the United Kingdom, Walid Saadaoui and Amar Hussein, were found guilty on Dec. 23 of planning what police described as potentially the “deadliest terrorist attack in U.K. history,” targeting the Jewish community in Manchester.
The men had purchased four AK-47 assault rifles, handguns, and thousands of rounds of ammunition with the intent to kill as many Jews as possible, while also planning to target Christians as “a bonus.”
Britain’s MI5 domestic intelligence agency and police led the investigation, which came months after the deadly Oct. 2 attack on a Manchester synagogue by an ISIS-supporting British-Syrian terrorist.
‘More extreme in content and language’
Dave Rich, director of policy at the Community Security Trust (CST), a charity focused on protecting British Jews against antisemitism and terrorism, described the current atmosphere as a “mixed picture.”
“The protests have shifted from being these big, frequent, large-scale events to smaller protests because it’s the hardcore activists now who are still out demonstrating. So, the protests are maybe smaller but maybe more extreme in content and language. Instead of marching through the city center, they’re outside Israeli restaurants,” he said.
The successful conviction of the Islamic State cell in Manchester provided a grim reminder of the threat facing the community, a threat that Rich noted has been prepared for over decades.
However, the terrorist attack at the Heaton Park Synagogue in Manchester on Yom Kippur marked a significant turning point, being the first fatal terror attack against a Jewish community in the United Kingdom in decades.
The December 2025 Bondi Beach terrorist attack, launched by an ISIS-inspired father and son and targeting a Chanukah event, was also deeply felt by the U.K. Jewish community, he noted.
“It hit people in the United Kingdom very hard, even though it’s on the other side of the world. People felt very connected to it,” he said.
Rich stressed that terrorism does not exist in a vacuum; it is a violent expression of a broader set of extremist attitudes that have been allowed to fester.
“Jihad Al Shami, who attacked Heaton Park Synagogue, according to witnesses, was shouting, ‘This is what you get for killing our children.’ Meaning in Gaza,” he said.
“Now, the narrative that Israel deliberately kills as many Palestinian children as it can is not limited to the Islamic State. That is a narrative that is extremely widespread in the anti-Israel movement and in a lot of the kind of campaigning against Israel and so on,” he added.
The “extreme and violent rhetoric directed towards Israel, Jews, and Zionists, and any combination of those, has not been dealt with properly and has been allowed to just carry on,” Rich warned, adding that “terrorism is a kind of indirect product of that.”
The threat map includes what Rich described as “self-starting” terrorists inspired by radical jihadist movements and ideologies like ISIS, as well as Iranian threats to Jewish communities and threats from the far-right. He described the overall combined threat as “very high.”
‘More about the broader set of ideas’
Despite the fear and the discussions about emigration, however, the Jewish community in Britain has largely refused to retreat from public life, he said, noting that there were more public Chanukkah events this year than in the previous year.
He emphasized, however, that the threat remains, even when direct organizational links are absent.
“It’s more about the broader set of ideas, the broader atmosphere,” he said.
British authorities have responded to the Manchester attack with increased funding and police attention, adding an extra 10 million pounds in emergency funding for extra security measures in addition to the annual 18 million pound budget for commercial security guards at Jewish schools, synagogues, and other locations.
These security arrangements are jointly managed by the state and the CST, which has enjoyed close cooperation with police over many years.
Rich acknowledged that police “do put a lot of resources into protecting the Jewish community” but said that this “is both good and bad.”
“It’s good because that support is there, but it’s worrying because it shows that the police and the broader state security institutions think that the threat is serious and real,” he said.
Amit Assa, a former senior member of the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) with more than 30 years of experience, told JNS in recent days that the threat goes beyond the immediate.
“The way the fundamentalist extreme global jihad operates is a long-term path; it is a path that has time in terms of years, and it looks forward,” he said.
Assa pointed to the financial and infrastructure aspects of radical networks as a critical vulnerability that several Western governments are failing to address.
The Muslim Brotherhood and similar entities build extensive networks based on funding from countries like Qatar and Turkey, establishing a foothold in universities, city centers, and charities, which are then used to spread extremist messaging and normalize and nourish antisemitism, he said.
“The main pathway is funds and building infrastructure on the basis of these funds,” said Assa.
“The infrastructure is on the one hand pro-Palestinian, promoting antisemitism and harm to Jews and Israelis around the world, while beyond that, they strengthen the Muslim Brotherhood,” he added.
Governments are failing to deal with such funding streams or even classify extremist organizations as such, said Assa, enabling ecosystems that produce much easier recruitment and indoctrination of future terrorists.
“If things are quieter now because Israel struck Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah, and there is now some sort of decrease in global pressure, this is deceptive. Because underneath the surface, these things continue to grow and threaten us,” he added.
The response must go beyond searching for ISIS or Iranian terror cells and focus on radical extremist elements within local communities, who have intimate knowledge of potential Jewish targets, he said.
He advocated for a “follow the money” approach to dismantle the financial pipelines fueling extreme organizations, alongside a robust policy aimed at boosting the influence and strength of moderate Muslim elements.
“If at the educational level you build an infrastructure that the state handles and says, ‘There is an Islam here that is not radical; there is an Islam here that is legitimate and sees us as legitimate, that views Christianity and Judaism as religions that can live in co-existence with it, and wants to live alongside them,’ this should be invested in by the state. In education, in mosques, and in the religious envelope, which is not radical, these should be promoted,” he added.
Such voices will also require protection because they will be targets of the radical Islamists, he warned, and if attacks on them occur, the moderate voices “will not be heard.”
The post Terror threat to British, European Jewish communities remains high appeared first on World Israel News.