Who are Harakat Ashab al-Yamin, the Golders Green suspects?
When a synagogue is firebombed or a Jewish school is targeted in Europe, the instinct is to reach for a familiar explanation: the rising tide of anti-Semitism, the radicalised lone wolf, the unhinged fringe. That explanation is no longer adequate. What is unfolding now in the UK and across Europe is not a spontaneous eruption of hatred. It seems now to be a coordinated campaign by Iran designed to make Jewish life feel existentially unsafe. The group behind this campaign calls itself Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiyyah, a previously unknown organisation that emerged this month claiming a bomb attack outside the Synagogue of Liège on 9 March, an arson attack on a synagogue in Rotterdam, and an explosive attack on a Jewish school in Amsterdam.
