Meet the Pro-Israel Lawyers Hounding the NHS

Earlier this year, an NHS trust in London banned staff from wearing badges in solidarity with Palestine. Novara Media revealed that the move came after a group of pro-Israel lawyers pursued the trust, insisting it was breaking the law.

This wasn’t the first time this particular group had directly influenced policy in British public bodies. In fact, it appears to have an outsize influence on public life in the UK, targeting not only the NHS but local councils, schools, high-profile creatives and private citizens. Its name is UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI).

UK Lawyers for Israel is split into two entities – the UKLFI Charitable Trust, set up in 2016, and UKLFI Ltd, a private company. This sort of dual structure typically allows organisations to comply with UK charity law and receive tax-deductible donations, all while undertaking political activities not usually permitted to charities.

The limited company arm of the organisation was initially incorporated under the name Action 4 Peace Ltd in 2010, but changed its name to UKLFI Ltd a few months later. Though its new name was more explicit about the organisation’s aims, UKLFI has historically preferred to keep a low profile. “We don’t seek out publicity,” Caroline Kendall, its former director of operations, who now lives in Tel Aviv, told the Jewish Chronicle in 2016. “We only want to be effective, and often it’s operating below the radar.”

In more recent times, UKLFI has sought increasing attention. Natasha Hausdorff, who joined UKLFI in 2014, has since become something of a public figure. Hausdorff has written opinion pieces in the Telegraph, appeared on primetime BBC news shows and given evidence to the foreign affairs select committee.

Not all of the press UKLFI has received has been positive, however. In July, bands Massive Attack and Kneecap announced an alliance of musicians speaking out about Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. The artists’ statement cites “aggressive, vexatious campaigns operated by UKLFI”. UKLFI reported Bob Vylan and Kneecap to the police and sent letters that resulted in the cancellation of both groups’ shows, and reported Pink Floyd musician Roger Waters to the police for allegedly expressing support for the proscribed direct action group Palestine Action.

The same month, the political stunt group Led By Donkeys projected a video onto the Charity Commission’s offices demanding an investigation into UKLFI’s charitable trust arm.

So what is UKLFI, and who’s behind it?

Complaining to the manager.

Though UKLFI’s stated aim is to “use the law to counter attempts to undermine, attack and delegitimise Israel, Israeli organisations, Israelis, and supporters of Israel”, in practice its work has largely involved targeting expressions of support for Palestinians. For the most part, its work has involved countering the Palestinian civil society-led boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement by targeting local councils with threatening legal letters. UKLFI credits its letters with getting BDS motions withdrawn and overturned in Lancaster, Belfast and Dublin and at universities such as London City, Aberdeen and Warwick.

Nor is it only councils and higher education that UKLFI targets. In June, the group reported nutritionist Joan Faria to her professional standards body for a social media recipe that encouraged the boycott of Israeli dates, which it claimed was “unsolicited advice … not appropriate for a nutritionist”.

Another arm of its operations has been sustained attacks on human rights charities and NGOs. In 2022, shortly after Amnesty International published its landmark report calling Israel an apartheid state, UKLFI wrote to the Charity Commission, urging it to investigate the organisation.

The group also pressured the commission to investigate the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians in 2018, alleging that it “spread political propaganda, promoted antisemitism … and has connections with organisations linked to the Palestinian terrorist organisation, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine”. The Charity Commission decided to take no further action.

UKLFI reported the charity War on Want to the commission just three months later for “alleged links to terrorist organisations”, including the PFLP. Even though the Charity Commission cleared War on Want of any wrongdoing, PayPal – which bars Palestinians from accessing its services in the occupied territories, while allowing Israeli settlers to do so – removed War on Want from its donations platform.

Culture and education form another big part of UKLFI’s work. In 2021, the Turner prize-nominated research group Forensic Architecture pulled its exhibition from Manchester’s Whitworth Gallery after UKFLI lobbied to have a statement of solidarity with Palestinians – which it said “seems designed to provoke racial discord” – removed from the display.

UKFLI has also intervened in the British education system by lobbying educational publisher Pearson on multiple occasions, complaining about the alleged “pro-Palestinian bias” in textbooks and exam papers. In June 2023, UKLFI successfully lobbied Pearson to withdraw its Edexcel English Language International GCSE exam paper because its question about a doctor’s experiences of operating on a child in Al Shifa hospital in Gaza “could have distressed students who are supportive of Israel during the exam”.

More recently, the group has targeted its efforts on the NHS. In February 2023, it managed to persuade Chelsea and Westminster Hospital to remove Gazan children’s artwork from the corridors, claiming it made Jewish patients feel “vulnerable, harassed and victimised”.

The trust’s crusade against the NHS continued this year, when it targeted Barts Health – an NHS trust encompassing five London hospitals – with several letters of complaint. Novara Media revealed that one such letter accused the trust of being “criminally liable” for allowing staff to wear ‘free Palestine’ and watermelon pin badges on their lanyards. Barts updated their uniform policy soon afterwards to ban all visible symbols of Palestinian solidarity. Three NHS staffers are taking Barts Health to court for discrimination.

UKLFI has targeted several other businesses that have allowed staff to wear pro-Palestine pins during Israel’s genocide, from household names like the Post Office and Selfridges to a Lake District garden centre.

Many of the trust’s targets are almost comically wholesome: in February 2024, UKLFI celebrated the cancellation of a community kite-making workshop, citing claims that the children’s event was “reminiscent of 7 October paragliders”. UKLFI also went after a hobby company that makes model railways, arguing that packaging featuring graffiti of the word ‘Gaza’ “could be reminiscent of 7 October”.

The group also undertakes work on an international level. In 2011, its CEO Jonathan Turner claimed “UK lawyers” had a crucial role in stopping a 2011 flotilla from reaching the Gaza Strip and breaking Israel’s maritime blockade. Also working on blocking the flotilla was Israeli law firm Shurat HaDin, an alleged proxy for Israeli intelligence service Mossad (the organisation did not reply to Electronic Intifada’s request for comment on the accusation).

More recently, in September 2024, UKLFI reported International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Karim Khan KC to the UK’s Bar Standards Board for allegedly making “false” statements about Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant when saying he would pursue arrest warrants for them. The lobby group claims that Khan had misled the ICC by failing to provide it with “exonerating evidence” sent to the court by UKLFI. Arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant were issued in November 2024 for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

And in May last year, UKLFI filed a 70-page dossier of complaints against UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese in May 2024, accusing her of displaying “conduct entirely unbefitting of her role” and sharing “offensive” posts on social media” – offensive posts such as one calling Israel’s operation in Gaza as a “policy of revenge”.

Friends in high places.

Both the staff and supporters of UKLFI are deeply embedded in the British establishment. Six of its nine patrons currently sit in the House of Lords, including Baron David Pannick, who advised former prime minister Boris Johnson over the Partygate scandal. Another, Lord John Dyson, served as the second most senior judge in England and Wales, and formerly chaired the advisory council to the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport.

The group also has deep links to legacy media. Its CEO Jonathan Turner and director Caroline Turner are the parents of Camilla Turner, political editor of The Sunday Telegraph. Last August, Turner co-authored a front-page story for the paper on a new report that accused the BBC of anti-Israel bias. Turner’s piece did not mention her father’s significant involvement in it. Hausdorff has written 12 times for the Telegraph since November 2023.

There are also suggestions that the group may have direct links to the state of Israel. In a 2019 article, American outlet Mondoweiss alleged that UKLFI has “at the very least” an “informal working relationship” with the Israeli ministry of foreign affairs after UKLFI hosted talks by the ministry’s former director general in 2017 and co-hosted a seminar with the ministry and Israeli embassy in London in 2012.

The group has acted explicitly in the interests of the state of Israel, threatening the UK government with legal action over its decision to suspend 8% of its arms licences to Israel.

UKLFI’s increasingly public profile has brought with it a significant amount of negative attention. In May, Turner attracted widespread criticism for suggesting that a positive consequence of Israel’s war on Gaza could be the reduction of obesity rates. Ben Jamal, director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, called Turner’s remarks “sickening” and said: “These repulsive comments illustrate exactly what it means to be ‘for Israel’ and how low its apologists are prepared to sink in their attempts to justify genocide in Gaza.”

With high-profile creatives speaking out against UKLFI and its tactics, and campaigners calling for an investigation of UKLFI’s charitable wing, are the lawfare group’s days of impunity about to come to an end?