UK Lawyers for Israel labelled a ‘major actor’ in repression of Palestine solidarity
UKLFI logo
Areeb Ullah reports in Middle East Eye on 25 February 2026:
A legal advocacy group has labelled UK Lawyers for Israel a “major actor” in what researchers have described as a systematic campaign of repression targeting pro-Palestinian activism in the UK.
The findings are published in a new database, the Index of Repression, compiled by the European Legal Support Centre (ELSC) in collaboration with Forensic Architecture, which documented 964 verified incidents of repression against expressions of solidarity with Palestine between 2019 and 2025.
The database, which launched on Wednesday, is the first UK-wide, cross-sector record of institutional action taken against pro-Palestinian activism across education, workplaces, protest spaces and cultural institutions, revealing what researchers describe as a systematic effort to silence pro-Palestinian expression.
Researchers say the index allows incidents to be searched by sector, actor, location and form of intervention, revealing patterns they say are obscured when cases are treated in isolation.
According to ELSC’s analysis, UKLFI appears repeatedly as an “initiating” or “escalating” actor against acts of Palestinian solidarity – often through complaint letters, legal threats or public pressure that prompts schools, universities, employers and public bodies to open disciplinary procedures or cancel events.
Researchers from ELSC and Forensic Architecture stress that the 128 cases linked to UKLFI represent only those that could be independently verified, and likely understate the scale of its involvement.
Amira Abdelhamid, a senior legal researcher for ELSC, said UKLFI “exploited the law” to silence pro-Palestine activism by using the IHRA definition of anti-semitism and terror legislation.