UKLFI & GC4I

The idea of establishing a “response unit” in the UK seems to have been first formulated by UK Lawyers for Israel in preparation for the 2014 meeting of the Global Coalition for Israel (GC4I), the leaked documents show.

Mondoweiss previously wrote about the GC4I, a partnership between the Israeli government and pro-Israel NGOs launched in 2010 to counter the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Its 2014 gathering – the first outside Israel – happened in London.

In preparation for the meeting, the Department of International Affairs within the Israeli Office of the State Attorney sent a survey to a number of organisations in the Coalition, asking them to list out what they viewed as the biggest challenges they were facing from the BDS movement.

The organisations, which included UKLFI, were part of the Legal Working Group at the 2014 GC4I event. The group was tasked with “presenting creative solutions for combating delegitimization of Israel in the national and international legal sphere”, according to the draft letter sent to the participants.

Jonathan Turner, then UKLFI’s Chairman, stated that one of the key legal challenges from BDS in the UK was the “propaganda against Israel delivered through student unions, charities, church groups, sometimes schools”. 

According to him, this challenge could be addressed using “legal tools” through the “establishment of a permanent organisation to provide legal support” vis-a-vis the challenges he identified.

Such a permanent body would be constituted of volunteer pro-Israel lawyers and “one full-time organiser, who should be a young lawyer or law graduate”. “Estimated cost £50,000 [per annum],” the recommendation stated.

It is not clear if the recommendation was taken up by the GC4I’s Legal Working Group though. A summary document, circulated a month after the GC4I 2014 meeting, does not include Turner’s suggestion.