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On September 7th, notorious Zionist lobby group UK Lawyers For Israel published a joint letter, triggered by 86% of International Association of Genocide Scholars members backing a resolution declaring Israel is committing genocide in Gaza days earlier. The lengthy screed blamed Hamas for Tel Aviv’s mass slaughter of Palestinians since October 7th, and charged the Resistance group itself was in fact guilty of genocide, on the risible, purported basis Operation Al-Aqsa Flood was intended “to destroy, in whole or in part, Jews and Israelis.”
UKLFI’s repulsive, inverted narrative of Tel Aviv’s 21st century Holocaust in Gaza was reportedly endorsed by close to 500 “legal, antisemitism, history, holocaust, and genocide scholars.” Yet, upon publication, multiple listed signatories angrily announced their names were included without consent, while denouncing the letter’s content in the strongest possible terms. Close inspection indicates several signatories are listed repeatedly, many are tied to Zionist lobby groups, and others - such as a professor of electrical engineering - are self-evidently unqualified to make any judgement on genocide whatsoever.
Such brazen fraud is par for the course for UKLFI. The group has a lengthy, deplorable history of targeting individuals and organisations via frivolous if not outright vexatious lawfare, falsely conflating criticism of the Zionist entity with antisemitism in order to neutralise Palestine solidarity in schools, universities, workplaces, hospitals, and elsewhere. UKLFI’s embarrassingly botched stunt is especially shameful this time round though, as the lobby group is presently embroiled in significant legal quandaries of its own. The situation is so dire, UKLFI could collapse.
As Declassified UK reported in August, a landmark complaint was filed against UKLFI by the Public Interest Law Centre and European Legal Support Center with Britain’s Solicitors Regulation Authority. The 114-page document accused the group of abusing the law for nakedly politicised intimidation purposes, and ostensibly operating as a legal body despite being unregulated and unaccountable. Adding to UKLFI’s woes, its charitable wing is concurrently under formal investigation by the Charity Commission For England and Wales, due to the pioneering research of advocacy group CAGE.
‘Validating Evidence’
Founded in 2010 - aptly following a “conference on lawfare” convened in an illegal Israeli settlement near Jerusalem - UKLFI quickly established itself at the forefront of a new, “more combative” strain of Tel Aviv’s lobbying in Britain. UKLFI’s website is entirely explicit about its rabid commitment to defending the Zionist entity by any means necessary. UKLFI avowedly provides “legal support including advocacy, research, advice and campaigning in combating attempts to undermine, attack and/or delegitimise Israel, Israeli organisations, Israelis and/or supporters of Israel.”
The organisation moreover aims “to contribute generally as lawyers to creating a supportive climate of opinion” in Britain towards the Zionist entity. CAGE forensically details how UKLFI’s stances are not only “fringe” within the legal profession, but reflect Zionism in its most extreme forms. For instance, the organisation’s representatives fervently argue the Occupied Palestinian Territories aren’t in breach of international law. The UN has consistently found over many years Israeli settlements in these areas are flagrantly illegal, and displaced Palestinians must be permitted to return home.
CAGE moreover traces UKLFI’s intimate yet opaque ties with the Israeli government. In 2012, the organisation jointly hosted a two-day seminar alongside the Zionist entity’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and London’s Israeli embassy on lawfare strategies. This included presentations on crippling the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement via litigation, and how British law - including the Public Order Act, legislation on Hate Speech, and civil suits for defamation - could be cynically exploited to the detriment of Palestine solidarity.
In 2019, UKLFI chiefs consulted senior Israeli Ministry of Justice officials, seeking “assistance in finding or validating evidence to help” the organisation in “potential legal actions” brought against it by two pro-Palestine charities, after UKLFI libelously charged the pair were linked to proscribed terrorist groups. The Zionist lobby group has lodged comparable, bogus complaints against countless organisations, including leading Palestinian aid providers, to the Charity Commission and other authorities since birth. This includes Amnesty International, for accusing Israel of practicing apartheid. None have been upheld.
In 2016, UKLFI established a charitable wing - the pair are effectively indivisible, sharing patrons and personnel. It claims to offer pro bono education and training services, but CAGE notes this invariably amounts to “apologia for racial segregation and apartheid.” Its events routinely host Zionist Occupation Force representatives, and hardline Zionist figures and groups. Some speakers deny uncontroversially proven, historic Israeli atrocities and massacres against Palestinians. Others offer advice to audiences on methods by which to weaponise the law to further Tel Aviv’s interests locally and globally.
In 2019, UKLFI’s charitable wing hosted representatives of Regavim, an Israeli NGO actively advocating for destruction of Palestinian property in the illegally occupied West Bank. The organisation itself employs lawfare, facilitating the industrial scale dismantling of Palestinian homes and infrastructure via regulatory loopholes. Resultantly, per CAGE, “entire communities” are left “without proper roads, houses, or even water systems.” Regavim was founded by Tel Aviv’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, and is Zionist entity-funded. Even liberal Israeli lobby groups harshly condemned the conference.
A common UKLFI tactic is to bombard British regulatory bodies and private entities “to disrupt any public displays of solidarity for Palestine” in any context, problematising even the most basic expressions of support for Palestinians, and criticism of the Zionist entity’s crimes, as somehow antisemitic. This has prompted numerous organisations to ban the wearing Palestine badges or associated paraphernalia by staff or students. In extreme instances, employees have lost their jobs. CAGE records:
“There are manifold cases in both the public and private sector of UKLFI writing to organisations and attempting to ensure staff of those organisations do not wear anything that might indicate support for Palestine…[UKLFI] doesn’t appear to have any cogent case for why expressing solidarity for Palestine necessitates Jewish people to feel unsafe - especially when considering the widespread support that the Palestinian cause has among Jewish groups in the UK.”
‘Encouraging Hamas’
UKLFI’s noxious activities have become turbocharged since the Gaza genocide’s eruption. Along the way, it has taken credit for the suspension of pro-Palestine NHS doctors, among other mephitic achievements. Meanwhile, in April 2024, UKLFI charity wing chief Natasha Hausdorff - formerly an Israeli Supreme Court clerk - testified to parliament’s Business and Trade Committee on British arms exports to the Zionist entity. She argued the flow of weapons should continue, dismissed confirmed Palestinian death tolls as fraudulent, and unbelievably praised Tel Aviv’s “consistent upholding of international humanitarian law.”
The next month, UKLFI deployed perverse arguments to deny the Zionist entity was deliberately starving Gazans. In a letter to Britain’s Co-operative Group opposing a motion to boycott Israeli products, UKLFI chief Jonathan Turner deprecated a Lancet estimate of 186,000 Palestinians murdered by Tel Aviv during the genocide to date. He sickeningly suggested Israel’s unconscionable assault in fact delivered health benefits that could increase local life expectancy, such as a reduction in obesity, due to constricted access to unhealthy food and cigarettes.
In September that year, UKLFI dispatched a formal letter to the British government threatening legal action in the form of a judicial review unless London’s partial, token suspension of 30 arms export licences to Tel Aviv was reversed. Three months later, the lobby group submitted complaints to the Bar Standards Board and International Criminal Court against ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan, for seeking arrest warrants against Israeli leaders. UKLFI alleged Khan breached professional conduct rules, by making false statements and misleading the ICC.
The Court responded by warning UKLFI of “their own ethical responsibilities” and “duty not to mislead.” Clearly undeterred, in April 2025 Hausdorff testified to parliament’s Foreign Affairs committee. She used the opportunity to dodge charges Israel was deliberately starving Palestinians, repeatedly dismiss any form of Palestinian statehood as “fantasy”, and accuse Western governments - including Britain’s own - of somehow “encouraging Hamas”. Hausdorff’s comments elicited audible objections of “delusional” from committee chair Emily Thornberry, not recorded in the hearing’s official transcript.
The next month, Hausdorff led a counter-protest in London against a public commemoration of Palestine’s 1948 ethnic cleansing - known as the Nakba - declaring the event an antisemitic blood libel, and “the lie of the Nakba” reflective of ever-rising, society-wide prejudice against Jews. This was despite the commemoration attracting a sizeable anti-Zionist Jewish presence. Hausdorff published her counter-protest address on social media - one of “innumerable” examples of public statements contrary to international law she has made collated by CAGE, which triggered the Charity Commission probe.
None of UKLFI’s work could plausibly be characterised as fulfilling legitimate charitable or legal objectives. It’s a bitter irony indeed the organisation, which has for a decade-and-a-half corrupted and distorted British law in service of Tel Aviv’s repugnant settler colonial project, ruining countless careers and lives in the process, now finds itself effectively in the dock. UKLFI’s latest faux pas, like Israel’s recent failed attempt at regime change in Iran, is unambiguously indicative of a flailing entity on the verge of extinction.
Also a crucially important analysis here:
https://www.palestinedeepdive.com/p/epstein-media-bias-and-israeli-influence
It shows how governments and publics are largely powerless against Israel’s power. Israeli is not a state with clearly defined borders. Instead it is literally “a power”. This power forms an intricate network of institutions, comprising both public and private entities across the West, developed over a century. These entities have generated a complex web of genealogical, technological and intelligence dependencies of the West on Israel that cannot be quickly “uprooted” through governmental policy. Around 10% of US government positions are held by Jewish individuals, and many more have Jewish ancestry. This is likely the case in the UK and EU as well. Far from a nation-state, Israel constitutes a different kind of entity: a metastasising network drawing power globally to take over territory and increase its own power. Its small size on the map hides a global power without measure. This fast spreading network of dependencies may well be the very reason for Israel’s de facto impunity Israeli politicians are aware of this—South Africa’s apartheid was much easier to challenge, as it lacked such a network. The inability of governments to uproot this metastasising network from their societies renders public opinion and action largely powerless. Recognising this becomes crucial for any serious attempt to think through the conditions for an effective counterstrategy.
Fantastic level of analysis that we have come to expect from you Kit, thank you.