The Israeli embassy terrorist shows why we must stop the boats

We were provided with yet another example of the security threat posed by illegal migration last week. A jury at the Old Bailey found small-boat migrant Abdullah Albadri guilty of preparing terrorist acts and possession of bladed articles, after he was caught in April last year trying to break into the Israeli embassy in London.

The Kuwait-born Albadri, who belongs to the stateless Bedoon tribe, had arrived in the UK in a small boat from France just 16 days before the attempted attack. It was the second time he had entered the UK illegally by small boat in four years. In August 2021, Albadri made his first illegal Channel crossing, subsequently claiming asylum. He has said that while awaiting his asylum decision, he hitched a lift in a lorry that he believed would take him to Manchester, but instead took him back to France.

Albadri’s motivation for preparing a knife attack on the Israeli embassy appears to be Israel’s war in Gaza. On the morning of the attack, he messaged his brother saying he had chosen ‘the path of martyrdom’ and he subsequently told police officers that he wanted to ‘do something to stop the war’. Irrespective of one’s views on the conflict (I myself oppose Israel’s actions in both Gaza and the West Bank and consider them ethnic cleansing), travelling to the UK to commit acts of terror is no way to make one’s voice heard.

How can a would-be terrorist manage to enter the UK illegally by small boat for a second time in the space of only four years? This is a fundamental border-security failure, which endangers lives across the UK.

The Albadri case also clearly illustrates the extremism threat posed by the ongoing small-boats crisis. It is enabling an influx of young men from countries that are hotbeds of Islamist extremism and anti-Jewish hatred. With these undocumented arrivals, there is little to nothing the authorities can do in terms of conducting background checks and investigating their links with terrorist organisations. This is especially dangerous when one considers that Iran has been a prominent country of origin for illegal migrants. Some of these new arrivals could well be sympathetic to the Islamic Republic, even if they don’t have links with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

While being comparatively smaller in number than Iranian nationals, there have also been small-boat migrants from Palestine and Yemen. Who is to say that none will have sympathies with Iran-backed, anti-Semitic proxies such as Hamas or the Houthis? Britain’s porous borders and dysfunctional asylum system run the risk of contributing to the growing problem of Islamist extremism – especially in the form of pro-Iran fanaticism. This poses a particular threat to Britain’s Jewish communities at a time when anti-Semitism is already at record levels.

It is high time that the small-boats crisis is treated by the authorities for what it is – a national-security emergency.

Rakib Ehsan is the author of Beyond Grievance: What the Left Gets Wrong about Ethnic Minorities, which is available to order on Amazon.