The security minister Dan Jarvis said the threat level increase was not determined “solely” as a result of the Golders Green attack, but had also been "driven by an increase in broader Islamist and extreme right-wing" threats.
An enhanced security presence around synagogues and Jewish community buildings has been particularly visible in London and Manchester.
The former troops were previously deployed to guard the community in the immediate aftermath of the deadly Yom Kippur terror attack on Heaton Park shul in Manchester, it is believed.
The development comes a day after Metropolitan Police chief Sir Mark Rowley, described the “Venn diagram of hate” British Jews are subject to from extremists on both the left and the right.
Speaking to The Times Rowley said the country was in the grips of an antisemitism “epidemic” and that he had written the the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, requesting funding to station 300 more officers – including firearms officers – permanently in the capital to bolster community protection.
Stamford Hill locals pass by Metropolitan Police officers patrolling the area in the wake of the Heaton Park shul terror attack in October (Photo: Getty)AFP via Getty Images
Britain is facing the most serious threat to its Jewish community “at any point in history,” according to Rowley, who has warned that a convergence of hate crime, terrorism and hostile state activity has created a dangerous environment.
Rowley said the growing scale of antisemitism is being fuelled in part by online platforms, where extremist views are becoming increasingly normalised. Citing polling data, he pointed to a troubling shift among younger generations, with one in six young people now apparently believing the Holocaust is “a lie”.
“This isn’t a criticism of young people but, as the world’s becoming more social media-led, they’re the cohort of people who are getting the majority of their information and news from non-traditional sources. Now those views are becoming more and more mainstreamed, which creates the picture we have today, and that’s what troubles me,” Rowley said.
“What troubles me is that this isn’t just about a few racist idiots, this is standing on something that is more embedded in society, that isn’t being challenged. There’s too much licensing of it in public debate. There’s too many people you hear at least half-excuse hostility towards Jewish communities on the basis of Israeli foreign policy.
“If your social media feeds are driven in a particular direction, you start to get more and more of this material. You end up absorbing and believing it, and that’s dangerous. That’s a battle for all of us.”
He added: “If you overlay three things now – hate crime, terrorism and hostile state activity – you add all that together, that combined effect with that building of ideology online, it is really dangerous and troubling. Jewish communities feel that: you can see that in how they talk, how it’s making them change their lives. That’s an appalling state of affairs.”
In the wake of Wednesday’s Golders Green stabbing, which left two men injured – Shloime Rand, 34, and Norman Shine, 76, who have both been discharged from hospital – public debate has intensified over the impact of large-scale anti-Israel marches.
Political leaders including Sir Keir Starmer have called for a reassessment of how such demonstrations are managed, citing concerns about chants such as “globalise the intifada”, which the prime minister labelled an example of "extreme racism".
