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Do you know how to respond if:
a friend makes an anti–Israel remark?
an anti-Israel poster goes up at work?
you hear something wrong about Israel, at a social event, at work, perhaps in the media?
someone suggests boycotting Israel?
Luke Akehurst’s support for Israel became reinforced during the years he was involved in student politics at Bristol University. Luke is full of praise for the work of the UJS which has created a whole generation of non-Jewish pro-Israel political activists, some of whom he is working alongside at BICOM.
As a Hackney councillor for 12 years and living in Stoke Newington for 16, he has had much interaction with the Charedi community of Stamford Hill. He has recently stood down after serving for eight years on the board of Agudas Israel Housing Association. Luke’s primary engagement with the Charedi community was over housing needs for the ultra-Orthodox.
We Believe in Israel was founded at the 2011 BICOM conference which was attended by 1,500 people. We Believe in Israel aims to build up grassroots pro-Israel organisations and initiate and implement pro-Israel campaigns. The organisation started with 1,500 members and now has a mailing list of more than 6,700, nearly half of whom are non-Jewish, mainly Christian.
Luke has said: “The pro-Israel community in the UK has always been good at top level stuff with politicians. My job is building campaigning infrastructure for ordinary people at local level.”
One of We Believe in Israel’s successes has been in local government, where it has created a network of pro-Israel councillors. “We need to be there because the boycott issue comes up and a lot of councillors go on to hold national political offices. We need to get to know them at the start of their political careers.”
Luke is very active in attempting to counter the Co-op boycott, encouraging people to join the organisation, go to meetings and argue Israel’s case. He is also involved in trying to persuade the British government, as a major funder of the Palestinian Authority, to put pressure on the Palestinians to clamp down on hate education.
He comments : “One thing I would like to stress is the cross-party nature of We Believe in Israel. Although I have a life outside work, which is heavily involved in Labour politics, I work with a coalition at We Believe in Israel of people of all parties or none.”