The talk by Naomi Linder Kahn of the Israeli NGO, Regavim, scheduled for 1 September 2019 has been postponed, so that proper security measures can be put into place.   This comes after a consortium of BDS activists and anti-Israel groups planned a mass demonstration at the event.

Since there has been some misinformed and misdirected criticism of the proposed event, we wish to draw attention to the following points:

UKLFI Charitable Trust aims to advance legal education in national and international political, social and economic policy regarding the State of Israel.

In pursuit of this we arrange speaker meetings on a range of issues, and with a range of views.  UKLFI Charitable Trust is not aligned with any particular political viewpoint or party in the UK or Israel.

Most of the objections to the proposed talk, which have been made so vociferously, related not to the invited speaker nor to the content of the talk, but to views on other matters reportedly expressed by a co-founder of Regavim, who no longer works there.

To be clear, UKLFI Charitable Trust does not endorse and abhors any form of homophobia and racism.

Regavim seek to ensure proper application of planning laws both in Israel within the Green Line and in Area C of the West Bank, which is under Israeli administration in line with the Oslo Accords.  As the intended speaker, Naomi Linder Kahn, has pointed out, proper enforcement of these laws benefits Arabs as well as Jews: see https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-arab-sectors-housing-crisis-is-real-and-solvable/.

We are disappointed that freedom of speech has been inhibited on this occasion but we are hopeful that the talk can be re-arranged in the near future, so that the activities of Regavim and the issues it seeks to address can be discussed and criticised in an open and civilised way.