Yachad and Israeli Embassy join forces against Israel “rogue state” motion

By Gabriel Pogrund

Liberal Zionist advocacy group Yachad and the Israeli embassy will join forces to oppose the motion that “Israel is a rogue state” at a university debate this evening.

The founder and director of Yachad, Hannah Weisfeld, is due to appear alongside the Israeli Embassy’s spokesperson Yiftah Curiel at a University of Southampton Debating Society event.

The unlikely alliance comes a week after Yachad, a long outspoken critic of the Israeli government, published research saying almost seventy per cent of British Jews feel “a sense of despair” every time Israel expands illegal settlements in the West Bank.

Speaking in support of the motion is Ghada Karmi, a Jerusalem-born Palestinian doctor of medicine and author, and Professor Jonathan Rosenhead, an academic at the London School of Economics and advocate of BDS.

Yiftah Curiel says the Israeli Embassy works with a “wide variety of Jewish organisations in the UK and is happy to join Yachad for this debate”.

“The Israeli embassy’s campus presence has grown tremendously this year, with participation in dialogue with students at LSE, where we won a debate on the two state solution, Aberdeen, St Andrews, Manchester and many other places,” he added.

Curiel was due to discuss the two-state solution at an Oxford University event last week, but Thames Valley Police and the Embassy advised organisers to cancel the event because of security concerns in the aftermath of the Paris attacks, according to student newspaper Versa.