The European Leadership Network (ELNET) and ELNET’s Forum of Strategic Dialogue (FSD) brought together 34 senior policymakers and experts from the E3 group of France, Germany, and the UK, the EU, NATO, and Israel.

The European Leadership Network (ELNET) UK and ELNET’s Forum of Strategic Dialogue (FSD) brought together senior members of parliament and experts from the UK and Israel.

Yesterday, I attended the main memorial in Park Hayarkon, Tel Aviv, held by the families of the Israeli hostages seized by Hamas on 7 October. I also visited the grounds of the Nova music festival where friends and families of the victims gathered to mourn and remember, all the more poignantly, that it was to the sound of rockets being fired overhead from Khan Yunis in Gaza, as they did so.

ELNET UK presents the latest updated version (September 2024) of its special briefing on the popular misconceptions regarding Israel – covering, amongst other topics, the humanitarian situation in Gaza; Iran, Hezbollah and the regional threat to Israel; “Apartheid” / BDS / “Settler Colonialism” and Nazi Comparisons; and the peace process. We hope this factual briefing will provide a powerful tool in combating misinformation, ignorance and discrimination against Israel.

Nobody doubts our government’s sincere desire to see an end to the terrible conflict in Gaza. We all share it. Sadly, its decision this week to stop some arms sales to Israel won’t help achieve that goal. Nor will it help hasten the end of the torment of the hostages and their families, or the suffering of thousands of other innocent Israeli and Palestinians caught up in the war – a war which was triggered by Hamas’ butchery on 7 October.

Ahead of the anniversary of the Abraham Accords ELNET UK has produced a pamphlet which highlights the vital strategic, military and economic partnership between the UK and Israel; it looks ahead to the Abraham Accords post Israel-Hamas conflict and includes information on some of Israel’s most innovative companies.

In his four years as Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer has abandoned the noxious anti-Zionist worldview of his predecessor, explicitly rejecting the “Manichean view” of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict which animates the hard-left.

In the first in a series of deep-dive interviews on issues arising from the Israel-Hamas conflict we look at the story of campus antisemitism through the lens of Israeli Assistant Professor at Columbia, Shai Davidai.

Lt Col Jonathan Conricus is the former international spokesperson for the IDF and now Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

The former Israeli ambassador to France last night urged a capacity auditorium at the north London community hub JW3 not to forget the hostages.

This women-only delegation to Israel brought 20 influential politicians, journalists, activists and community leaders, from all over Europe, to learn first-hand about the horrors of the sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas on and after October 7; and to create an international platform for cooperation in providing security for women and girls regardless of their nationality, religion, or age.

As we approach eight months of war in the Middle East and mark Israel’s 76th Independence Day, our many personal screens are replete with the evidence of unprecedented polarisation.

The near-weekly demonstrations against the Hamas-Israel war on the streets of London and the protests currently roiling America’s campuses are not pro-peace but anti-Israel. And many bear the undeniable stain of gross antisemitism.

British Foreign Secretary David Cameron last visited Israel in November 2023, and though the conflict is no longer the top news agenda item in the Western media, the context could not be more kinetic and volatile. The agenda for discussions with Israel will be marked not by what Lord Cameron sets out to achieve but by what the UK (and US) seek to avoid; in broad terms that is escalation into an all-out regional conflict (dragging in the US and UK) including direct confrontation with Iran, and a potential humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

I have just returned from Israel. It was never going to be an easy trip, but I felt well prepared. In fact it turned out to be both more depressing and more uplifting than I had anticipated.

As we look back in sorrow on 2023, a year overshadowed by Hamas’s 7th October attacks on Israel and the ensuring conflict, we should take a moment to reflect that for those in the Jewish community it was also the start to a terrible Rosh Hashanah (with the attacks coming barely a month afterwards, on the eve of Simchat Torah which celebrates the beginning of a new cycle in the Jewish calendar).

Today marks the start of Hanukkah – a time when Jewish families gather together to celebrate the miracle at the heart of the “Festival of Light.”

The images of the pale, weak and overwhelmed hostages as they are freed from captivity should serve as a reminder that without pressure from Israel, in the form of a ground invasion into Gaza, their fate would have been as additional entries on Hamas’s tally of terror and barbarism.

This week’s news cycle has seen unrelenting focus on the Al-Shifa hospital, with ever increasing media skepticism turning into hostility towards, and condemnation of Israel, as it searches for hostages and pushes forward with its mission to ensure Hamas’ terrorist infrastructure and its ability to operate as a terrorist organisation are destroyed.

As the Israeli ground invasion progresses, a coalition is gradually emerging between those that were reluctant to condemn the 7th October (7/10) terrorist attacks on Israel and even those who, it appears, were prepared to only give lip-service to Israel’s right to defend itself. This nascent and loose coalition is rallying around the call for an immediate unilateral ceasefire.