Leak reveals UK lawyers, Israeli government planned ‘special unit’ to counter human rights reporting. Here’s what we know.

On 10 August 2017, pro-Israel advocacy group UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) approached the Embassy of Israel in London with a “pitch for business”: a proposal to setup “a rapid response unit to correct false narratives” regarding Israel.

According to the proposal, human rights organizations “such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty, routinely publish material condemning Israeli government policy [in Palestine] as disproportionate and discriminatory”.

To counter this, Steven Kay QC and Joshua Kern from London’s 9 Bedford Row International (9BRI) were offering to work with UKLFI “as a response unit to counter” such reports, in order to “develop content capable of responding” to them, at a “granular, detailed, or item by item level”. …more