Episode 70: Is Yachad UK really anti-occupation?

First aired on 27 May 2023

Yachad UK is a Zionist group linked to the Israeli embassy that claims its purpose is to work with organizations that "fight the occupation".

Yachad is a proud member of the Board of Deputies. It boasts in its 2020 trustees report of a "close working relationship with the Israeli embassy, the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, and the IDF Spokesmans Department".

In July 2020, Yachad received a briefing from Ami Ayalon, the former head of Israel's internal intelligence agency, Shin Bet.

Yachad, in its own trustees' report, claims to "work closely with political partners in Israel" and enthusiastically states that two of its former fellows are now on the National Council of the Zionist Federation.

The board of the so-called anti-occupation Yachad once featured the notorious former employee of the Israeli embassy, Ella Rose. Pictured here on a lobbying trip with Israeli government figures, Ella Rose worked as a public affairs officer at the Zionist embassy between 2015 and 2016 before being directly dispatched to the Jewish Labour Movement, which is affiliated with the World Zionist Organisation.

Another link to that sordid section of the lobby is Mike Katz, who sits on the board of Yachad at the same time as being the National Chair of the JLM.

Another member of the Yachad board, Rob Geist Pinfold, is simultaneously a research fellow at the Israeli intelligence think tank, The Institute for National Security Studies.

The director of the think tank is Amos Yadlin, the former head of Israeli military intelligence.

Yachad also coordinated with one of Israel's three national institutions, the United Jewish Israel Appeal.

The UJIA has hosted a school tour for the supposedly anti-occupation organization Yachad. Interestingly, while Yachad claims to oppose settlements, its helpful partner UJIA has been found to take British citizens for overnight stays in illegal Israeli settlements on tours of occupied Palestine.

The links between Yachad and the UJIA do not end there. The chair of Yachad, Simon Sadie, was previously the founding chair of the UJIA Business Division. That does not sound very anti-occupation.

Another interesting connection between Yachad and the illegal settlements that it claims to oppose is in its funding. The Pears Foundation finances Yachad, which is not surprising as Hannah Weisfeld, a former consultant to the Pears Foundation, is now the director of Yachad. How cozy.

What is less known is that the Pears Foundation funds the Hebrew University in occupied al-Quds, which takes students from Oxford University to stay in the illegal French Hill settlements.