February saw a sharp increase in the proportion of Israelis who describe the Jewish state’s overall situation as either bad or very bad, according to the Israeli Democracy Institute’s February 2023 polling. The percentage of Israelis who are optimistic about the future of Israel’s national security declined from 46 percent Read more…
Saudi Arabia has reportedly asked the United States to approve the development of a civilian nuclear programme in exchange for the kingdom normalising relations with Israel. The demand is the latest in a series of asks put to the US from Riyadh, though such a deal remains “very far off”, the Times Read more…
Iran and Saudi Arabia are to re-establish diplomatic relations, following an agreement brokered by China, which has potential implications both for the US’ role in the Middle East and Israel’s hopes of fostering an alliance to challenge Tehran’s bid for regional dominance. What happened The agreement between Iran and Saudi Read more…
LFI director Michael Rubin has written the below article for the Jewish Chronicle. Click here to read the original. For friends of Israel, the last two months have been depressing and disturbing. Benjamin Netanyahu’s self-serving efforts to emasculate the independence of the judiciary and the repellent actions and rhetoric of his far-right Read more…
The Labour frontbench has today reiterated the party’s support for UK involvement in the International Fund for Israeli-Palestinian Peace, a longstanding LFI campaign goal. Responding to a debate in the House of Lords on Israeli-Palestinian peace, Labour’s Lords FCDO spokesperson Lord Collins highlighted the importance of “economic development and Read more…
A number of LFI peers have this evening taken part in a debate on ‘calming the violence and build a lasting peace between the government of Israel and the Palestinian people’ in the House of Lords. LFI Lords chair Baroness Ramsay reminded colleagues of how Iran’s support for terrorism in Read more…
Israeli president Isaac Herzog has praised a summit involving the biggest business delegation from the Gulf which “would have been pure fantasy a few years ago”. Herzog formally opened the OurCrowd summit, the biggest investor event in the Middle East for start-up companies, saying he was particularly glad to see Read more…
Reza Pahlavi, the son and heir of the exiled Shah of Iran, has claimed that proscribing Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) would have the effect of “pulling out the biggest tooth the regime has”. The IRGC is Tehran’s ideological terror army, founded in 1979 to protect the Islamic republican Read more…
Recent violence in the West Bank between the IDF and Palestinian militant groups has witnessed small numbers of young Palestinian men take up arms against Israel in defiance of the Palestinian political leadership. A number of newly emerging groups, many with fluid and overlapping affiliations, have emerged which lack clear Read more…
Record numbers of Israelis took part in protests on Saturday night as opposition to Benjamin Netanyahu’s judicial reforms continues to mount. An estimated 250,000 people took to the streets of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa and over 90 other locations. Almost all the reservists in the Israeli air force’s elite Squadron Read more…
LFI chair Steve McCabe MP has written the below article for JewishNews. Click here to read the original. In the past week, Iran’s foreign minister was invited to address the annual opening session of the UN Human Rights Council. Steve McCabe MP, chair of Labour Friends of Israel, pledges his party’s Read more…
LFI parliamentary supporter and MP for Bury South Christian Wakeford has today welcomed a group of Israeli students to Parliament. The group was a delegation of students from Hebrew University who form part of Israelity, a student organisation sponsored by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America Read more…