We need to talk about UK Liars for Israel
TetleysTLDR: The summary
UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) is toxic. It's not a neutral legal body but a political lobby that weaponises law to silence criticism of Israel. Masquerading as defenders of Jews, they bully universities, NHS staff, journalists and charities through pseudo-legal threats and libel suits. T heir tactics: intimidation letters, regulatory complaints, and SLAPP-style warnings create a chilling effect on free speech. They stayed silent when Reform UK launched a vile, antisemitic smear against Jewish Green Party deputy leader Zack Polanski, proving they only care about antisemitism when it serves Zionism. From supporting Owen Jones for exposing BBC bias to hounding nurses over Palestine badges, UKLFI exploits the language of equality to defend apartheid and suppress dissent. They don’t protect Jews, they protect Israeli impunity. Exposing them isn’t antisemitic; it’s essential to defending democracy, truth, and the right to call out state brutality wherever it festers.
TetleysTLDR: The article
UK Lawyers for Israel are a group styling itself as a body of independent lawyers, championing the 'rights of Israel and Israelis' and firing off warning letters to campuses, hospitals and councils, you might assume you’re dealing with dispassionate defenders of law and order, but in the case of UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) what we’re really looking at is something far darker: a lobby machine masquerading as a legal body, using the language of law to bully, intimidate and silence. Its entire existence rests on one trick: to reframe political criticism of Israel as an act of antisemitism. Once you accept that false premise, everything else follows: threats to universities, to charities, to individuals, all carried out under a paper mask of legality. It’s lawfare, pure and simple.
Founded in 2011, UKLFI claims to 'combat BDS [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions] and other attempts to undermine, attack or delegitimise Israel'. (uklfi.com)
In 2016 it added the UKLFI Charitable Trust, allowing it to collect UK-based donations for its lobbying and 'educational' work, a convenient arrangement that blurs the line between political activity and charity law. Its patrons read like a Who’s Who of establishment respectability: Lord Dyson, Baroness Deech, Lady Cosgrove: each lending gravitas to what is, at base, a pressure group draped in legal robes.
The Real Purpose: Silencing, Not Debating
Rather than defend free expression, UKLFI’s letters and 'legal analyses' create a chilling effect across public life. Universities, arts bodies, even NHS trusts receive sternly worded correspondence implying that hosting Palestinian voices, allowing staff badges, or screening films might breach equality law or constitute antisemitism. As journalist Asa Winstanley has documented, UKLFI has repeatedly targeted Palestinian charities and cultural events, sometimes making unfounded accusations of 'terror links'. (Electronic Intifada) In one instance, it was forced into an out-of-court settlement after smearing a children’s charity. That, apparently, counts as 'legal advocacy' in their world.
1. The NHS “Palestine badge” row
In 2025, UKLFI threatened a London NHS trust over staff wearing small pro-Palestine badges, demanding disciplinary action. (Novara Media)
The nurses in question were praised for their care; their only 'crime' was refusing to perform neutrality theatre while children were being slaughtered in Gaza. UKLFI’s letter attempted to weaponise employment law to police moral expression.
2. Arms-export interference
UKLFI even challenged the UK Government’s brief suspension of arms-export licences to Israel, threatening judicial review unless the ban was lifted. (uklfi.com)
That’s not 'supporting the rule of law', that’s lobbying for bombs.
3. Censorship in culture and education
The group has pressured publishers and arts venues, including Pearson Education and the Scottish Storytelling Centre, to censor what they consider 'anti-Israel' content. (The Guardian)
This is textbook SLAPP behaviour: the mere threat of legal action is enough to make institutions fold.
4. The Owen Jones libel case
Perhaps the clearest sign of how deeply this lawfare culture has seeped into public life came in 2024, when journalist Owen Jones published an exposé titled “The BBC’s Civil War Over Gaza.”
Drawing on 13 BBC staff testimonies, he accused Middle East online editor Raffi Berg of enforcing a pro-Israel editorial line. (Irish Examiner)
Berg promptly sued for libel in the High Court, claiming reputational harm and citing threats he’d received following publication. But the telling detail? Berg’s legal representation included figures linked to UK Lawyers for Israel. (The Canary) The message could not be clearer: if even Owen Jones, with his platform, his following and his resources can be dragged into a costly court battle for criticising institutional bias toward Israel, what chance does a student activist or NHS nurse have?
This is lawfare by intimidation, and it relies on fear rather than legal merit.
5. Libel settlement over Palestinian charity
As noted earlier, UKLFI quietly settled after falsely claiming a Palestinian charity had terror links. (Electronic Intifada)
When even 'lawyers' resort to defamation, you know the argument’s lost. An liable is only enforceable in the courts if the accusations aren't true.
Legal and Political Implications
Each of these episodes illustrates the same corrosive pattern: A controversial statement or act of solidarity occurs. UKLFI issues a letter dressed in pseudo-legal jargon. The target, terrified of reputational ruin folds or self-censors. This cycle has nothing to do with protecting Jewish people from discrimination and everything to do with shielding Israel from accountability. Regulatory complaints, libel threats and equality-law scare tactics blur the line between free speech and hate speech, creating confusion where moral clarity once stood. It's worth pointing out that Solicitors Regulation Authority has received complaints about UKLFI’s conduct and its alleged use of 'vexatious legal threats' against campaigners. (The Guardian)
Selective Outrage: The Polanski Silence
And here’s where the mask really slips. For all their bluster about 'protecting Jews from discrimination', UK Lawyers for Israel, in tandem with other normally very vocal groups were noticable by their deafening silence when Reform UK launched a Der Stürmer-style smear campaign against Green Party deputy leader Zack Polanski, a proudly Jewish politician who also happens to be critical of Israel.
Reform’s attack was dripping with classic antisemitic imagery and undertones, the sort that would make Goebbels nod in recognition. Yet from UKLFI? Nada. Not a statement, not a peep, not a single pompous letter. Apparently antisemitism only counts when it can be weaponised for Israel, not when it’s hurled at Jews who refuse to align with the occupation.
When the target is a dissident Jew, the 'defenders of Jewish dignity' suddenly lose their pens. More than anything this silence exposes UKLFI for what they are, not a legal organisation protecting Jewish people, but a political lobby shielding Israeli state interests, and alone should threaten their charitable status.
They don’t fight antisemitism; they exploit it. They don’t defend Jews; they divide them. And in doing so, they turn a genuine struggle against bigotry into a cynical PR exercise for apartheid.
The False Conflation: Criticising Israel ≠ Antisemitism
For the umpteenth time: criticising a state’s behaviour is not racism.
Yet UKLFI’s entire strategy depends on convincing the public that it is. Their logic runs like this:
Israel calls itself a Jewish state. Therefore, criticism of Israel must be criticism of Jews. Therefore, criticism of Israel is antisemitic. It’s political alchemy, turning dissent into hate by definitional sleight of hand.
The real outcome is devastating: it cheapens the fight against genuine antisemitism while protecting a state engaged in apartheid, occupation and war crimes.
From the NHS nurses disciplined for wearing badges to Owen Jones being sued for naming pro-Israel bias in the BBC, we can trace a single thread a system of coercive lawfare designed to deter even modest dissent.
The chilling effect is immense: a hospital manager, an arts curator, a student union rep, all will think twice before touching Palestine. And that, of course, is the whole point.
Checklist of legal and ethical issues
- SLAPPs – Strategic legal threats against public participation.
- Regulatory misuse – Complaints to the SRA and Charity Commission as intimidation. Defamation risk – Use of libel to punish legitimate reporting (see Owen Jones case).
- Conflation of state and religion – A deliberate erasure of the line between Jewish identity and Israeli policy.
- Foreign-aligned lobbying – Using UK legal infrastructure to advance another state’s political agenda.
Final word: why this fight matters
UK Lawyers for Israel dress their bullying up as jurisprudence. They are not defending Jews from bigotry; they are defending Israel from scrutiny, and in doing so, they trample the very civil liberties they claim to uphold. When journalists are sued, nurses silenced and academics hounded, we are no longer talking about the defence of law but its weaponisation.
They use libel law. But in practice, it’s often nothing more than a gag: a tool of power used to strangle truth at birth. Yet when campaigners and journalists expose the horror of war crimes, or point to the blood on the hands of governments and their lobbyists, it’s not reputations that are at risk, it’s the illusion of innocence. Libel, in theory, is supposed to guard against lies that damage a person’s good name. But when the facts are true - when what’s being said is demonstrably, provably, uncomfortably true then no libel has occurred. The law even says so. Truth is a complete defence.
Groups like UK Lawyers for Israel have become experts in using the threat of libel, not the law itself, as a weapon. Their aim isn’t justice, it’s silence. This is the essence of a SLAPP — a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. It’s lawfare, not law: an intimidation tactic dressed up as due process. You don’t need to win the case; you just need to make people too scared to speak. Journalists pull their punches. Activists self-censor. Academics water down their research. The truth shrinks, while injustice expands.
And here’s the obscene irony: libel law was meant to protect the powerless from falsehoods. Instead, it’s being twisted into a shield for the powerful, those with deep pockets and deep connections, to hide from the consequences of their own actions. You can bomb hospitals, you can occupy land, you can target aid workers, but don’t you dare say it, or a lawyer will come knocking with a letterhead and a threat.
UKLFI are being investigation by the Law Society and the Charity Commission precisely becasue of this. The truth doesn’t become libel just because it embarrasses the guilty. The exposure of war crimes, corruption, or apartheid isn’t a smear; it’s a public service. Under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, every one of us has the right to freedom of expression, including the right to offend, to challenge, to speak truth to power. That right doesn’t vanish when the subject is Israel, or the corporations that profit from its occupation. So when groups like UKLFI posture as defenders of 'reputation', what they’re really defending is impunity. They’re the legal arm of a moral panic, the barristers of censorship.
This is exactly the point. They know that for every activist silenced by fear of a lawsuit, dozens more will hold their tongue. That’s the real victory they seek. Telling the truth about oppression is not defamation. Exposing state crimes is not libel and if the truth damages someone’s reputation, that’s not the fault of the speaker, it’s the fault of the deeds.
UKLFI know only too well that the only people who fear the truth are those who can’t afford to face it, because when the law becomes a weapon against truth-tellers, it ceases to be justice. It becomes tyranny: legalised, notarised, and stamped with a crest. The only antidote to that is courage. Courage to keep speaking, keep exposing, keep naming the guilty. Because truth, however buried, has a habit of digging itself back out.
The lesson from Zack Polanski’s vilification and Owen Jones’s court case and from every letter UKLFI sends: is that this is a campaign not of persuasion, but of fear. As long as UKLFI and its allies continue to conflate legitimate criticism with hate, the struggle for justice in Palestine, and by extension for free speech in Britain, remains inseparable.
To expose their tactics is not merely an act of solidarity; it’s an act of democratic self-defence.
Tetley is a left of centre writer and retired musician based in the UK. A former member of the Labour Party, he writes political analysis exposing Britain’s authoritarian drift, the criminalisation of protest, and the erosion of civil liberties.
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