Anglo-Israel Association

The Anglo-Israel Association (AIA) is a charity founded in 1949 by Sir Wyndham Deedes, a Zionist sympathiser, the year after the foundation of the state of Israel. According to its website the AIA has 3 main objectives:

1. To support educational programmes enabling the people of both countries to deepen their understanding of each other.

2. To promote a wider understanding of Israel in the UK.

3. To foster goodwill between the two countries.

The AIA organises a wide range of activities ‘to promote education in particular and information in general about Israel.’ In the past, it has promoted talks by neo-conservative speaker Emanuele Ottolenghi and it has debated against the academic boycott of Israel. It has links with the Henry Jackson Society and the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies (INSS).

It is partially funded by foundations, including the Charles Wolfson Charitable Trust and the Lewis Family Trust, that are linked to Zionist and conservative thinks tanks.

People

Founder: Wyndham Deedes

Sir Wyndham Deedes was born in Kent, England, in 1883. In 1915 he was a brigadier general in Cairo where he worked to secure Arab support against the Turks. From 1920 to 1922 he served as chief secretary under High Commissioner Sir Herbert Samuel. He strongly condemned the Arab riots of 1921 ans Deedes authorised the enlistment of Jewish volunteers to help defend Jaffa and Tel Aviv. He retired from military life in 1923 and moved to London, UK. In 1943 he founded the British Association for the Jewish National Home in Palestine. A year after the creation of the state of Israel in 1949 he formed the Anglo-Israel Association. He died in 1956.

Deedes was a deeply religious Christian and believed that the only way Christians could atone for their treatment towards the Jews was by working to establish a Jewish state in Palestine. In 1918 he met and became close friends with Chaim Weizmnann, a Zionist leader who later became the first president of Israel. In 1926 Deedes was invited by the Executive of the Zionist Organisation of Poland for a two week tour.

On March 14th 1927, Deedes and Weizmnann attended a banquet at the mount Royal Hotel in Canada to celebrate the opening of a local branch of Keren Hayoda, a Zionist fund-raising organisation. The same week the two friends also attended a lunch at the Commodore Hotel. According to the Jewish Daily Bulletin, Weizmann stated: ‘We Jews have no titles to confer. We have only one expression which may be properly applied to Sir Wyndham. He is one of the ‘Chassidei Umoth Ha’olam’ (Righteous men of the nations) and as such he will long be remembered.’ Wyndham also claimed his support for Zionism on the basis of moral and historical reasons, stating ‘I often fail to understand why some view Zionism as a purely national movement which is totally secular and is opposed to religion. So far as Jewish life goes, the national idea and religion are so closely interwoven that they are inseparable'.

In 2006, his nephew William Deedes wrote an article in the Daily Telegraph stating that ‘Muslims can never conform to our ways’.

Circa 2012

Officers (as of December 2012)

• Lord P. Bew (Chairman)
• Mr M. Green (Vice-President)
• Mrs L. Hochhauser (Vice-President)
• Mr R. Bolchover (Co-Deputy Chairman)
• Professor D. Hochhauser (Co-Deputy Chairman)
• Sir Michael Latham (Vice-President)
• Lady Sainsbury (Chairman of Council)
• Mr G.R. Pinto (Vice-President)
• MrJ. Marshall (Vice-President)
• Mr A. Epton FCA (Hon Treasurer)

Executive Committee (Trustees)

• Mrs J. Atkin
• Lord P. Bew (Chairman)
• Mr R. Bolchover (Co-Deputy Chairman)
• Dr M. Brearley
• Mr A. Diamond
• Miss B. Dingle
• Mr A. Epton FCA (Hon Treasurer)
• Professor D. Hochhauser (Co-Deputy Chairman)
• Mr A. Reeve
• Mr W. Shawcross (resigned 4 October 2012)
• Dr A. Sher
• Mrs E. Tarling
• Mr T. Vince
• Mrs O. Polizzi

circa 2011

Officers (2011)

• The Lord Bew (Chairman from 16 February 2011)
• Sir Andrew Burns KCMG (Chairman until 15 February 2011)
• Mr M. Green (Vice-President)
• Mrs L. Hochhauser (Vice-President)
• Mr R. Bolchover (Co-Deputy Chairman)
• Professor D. Hochhauser (Co-Deputy Chairman)
• Lady Sainsbury (Chairman of Council)
• Mr G.R. Pinto (Vice-President)
• Mr J. Marshall (Vice-President)
• Mr J. Nedas FCA (Hon Treasurer until 4 April 2011)
• Mr A. Epton FCA (Hon Treasurer from 4 April 2011)

Executive Committee (Trustees) (2011)

• Mrs J. Atkin
• The Lord Bew (Chairman from 16 February 2011)
• Mr R. Bolchover (Co-Deputy Chairman)
• Dr M. Brearley
• Mr A. Diamond
• Miss B. Dingle (joined 25 January 2011)
• Mr A. Epton FCA (Hon Treasurer from 4 April 2011)
• Professor D. Hochhauser (Co-Deputy Chairman)
• Mr A. Reeve joined 25 January 2011
• Mr W. Shawcross joined 5 July 2011
• Dr A. Sher (joined 25 January 2011)
• Mrs E. Tarling
• Mr T. Vince
• Mr G.A. Yablon (retired 5 July 2011).

Executive Director

• Mrs Ruth Saunders

• Paul Anthony Elliott Bew, Baron Bew (born 22 Jan. 1950) is a Northern Irish historian. He has worked at Queen's University Belfast since 1979, and is currently Professor of Irish Politics, a position he has held since 1991. He was an unofficial adviser to the former Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble and they are both signatories of the Cambridge neoconservative think tank the Henry Jackson Society's Statement of Principles. Bew was appointed to the House of Lords as a Life Peer in February 2007 and sits as a cross bencher. He has been chairman of AIA from February 2011. Bew has expressed praise for the Alliance for Middle East Peace, a group of over 70 leading non-governmental organizations working to foster reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians. In a debate on the European Union’s role in the Middle East peace process in January 2014, Bew stated that:

the EU should focus on what it does well—state-building and creating an environment in which Israelis and Palestinians feel comfortable in engaging with each other in areas of mutual benefit, such as water and energy. The EU currently funds the Palestine Academy for Science and Technology, and could do even more to help the high-tech companies and thousands of technology graduates in the Palestinian territories.

• Martin Green is Vice-President and was elected deputy Chairmen of the Executive Committee, AIA in 1994.

• Mrs Lilian Hochhauser is Vice President and was born in 1926 in the UK.
• Daniel Hochhauser is Kathleen Ferrier Professor of Medical Oncology at UCL. He is a consultant medical oncologist at UCLH specialising in the treatment of gastrointestinal cancer. On Thursday 13 January 2011 he participated at LSE at an event around the following motion: 'This house believes in an academic boycott of Israel'. Hochauser argued against the academic boycott and the motion was defeated. In November 2012 he wrote a negativity review for Jewish Chronicles of 'The Making and Unmaking of a Zionist' by Antony Lerman. In 2005 he was a signatory to a letter against academic boycott that was published by The Guardian.
• Richard Bolchover is an academic at the University of Oxford and author of ‘British Jewry and the Holocaust’, published in 1993.

Lady Sainsbury (Chairman of Council)

Lady Susan Sainsbury, was appointed as the new chairman of the Anglo-Israel Association in 2001. She is the wife of former Conservative minister Sir Timothy Sainsbury, who was also President of the Conservative Friends of Israel from 1997 until 2005.

Mr G.R. Pinto (Vice-President)

Mr George Richard Pinto was born in the UK in 1929 and has been the Director of Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies since 1991.3 In the third quarter of 2013 he donated £10,269 to the Conservative Party.

Mr J. Marshall (Vice-President)

John Leslie Marshall (born August 19, 1940) is a British Conservative politician. He was MEP for London North from 1979 to 1989. John Marshall was Mayor of the London Borough of Barnet in the Municipal year 2008-2009. He was appointed vice president of AIA in 1994.

William Hartley Hume Shawcross

William Shawcross is (born 28 May 1946, Sussex) is the Chairman of the Charity Commission for England and Wales and a British writer and commentator.

Shawcross was educated at Eton and University College, Oxford. He was a member of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees's Informal Advisory Group from 1995 to 2000. From 1997 to 2003 he was a member of the BBC World Service Advisory Council. In 2008 he became a Patron of the Wiener Library and in 2011 he joined the board of the Anglo-Israel Association and was appointed to the board of the Henry Jackson Society.

His daughter Eleanor from his second wife Michal Levin is a member of the Council of Economic Advisers to George Osborne. She had previously worked on Boris Johnson's mayor campaign. Eleanor is married to Simon Wolfson, Baron Wolfson, the chief executive of the clothing retailer Next and a Conservative life peer. He is the son of former Next chairman David Wolfson, Baron Wolfson of Sunningdale, also a Conservative life peer.

Shawcross resigned in 2012 from the AIA and Henry Jackson board to become Chair of the Charity Commission.

Activities

The AIA organises a wide range of activities ‘to promote education in particular and information in general about Israel.’

Ambassadors’ Round Table

Since 2009 it has organised every year an Ambassadors roundtable on a specific topic, bringing together academics, MPS, diplomats and scientist from both Israel and Britain. The 4th Ambassadors' Roundtable was held on Renewable Technology on 16 October 2012 in the Great Gallery in Lancaster House. The conference, opened by AlA's Chairman Lord Bew, was chaired by Oliver Morton, senior Editor of The Economist and the keynote speech was given by Nick Butler, Professor and Chair of the Kings Policy Institute. The Opening Remarks were given by Matthew Gould, UK's Ambassador to Israel, and HE Daniel Taub, Ambassador of Israel to the UK.

The Third Ambassadors’ Round Table held on the 3 November 2011 was titled ‘The Challenges and Opportunities of Moving from Innovation to Entrepreneurship: The UK and Israeli Perspective’.

The Second Ambassadors Roundtable, held on Tuesday 26th October 2010 looked at problems and issues relating to media coverage of Israel, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and wider Middle East and brought together a journalists, media commentators, scholars and parliamentarians from Israel and the UK. Present was also Nachman Shai MK, Kadima Party Member who commented:

‘The conference was very important and focused on a very critical issue, how the media deals with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the way Israel is portrayed by the liberal press in Britain. We have a lot of questions on how the British media treats Israel and why Israel is treated differently. The conference delved into these issues and provided an excellent insight into these concerns.’

Annual Dinner

Each year AIA holds an Annual Dinner attracting over 400 guests and supporters prominent in British society. The 2012 Annual Dinner hold at the Savoy Hotel generated an income of £55,781. The guest speaker of the night was Major General Aharon Zeevi Farkash the former head of Israeli Military Intelligence. According to the AIA, website, Major Farkash’s main concern was that the West did not realise that its true enemy is Radical Sunni Islam. The Israeli Ambassador, Daniel Taub was also present.

Speakers’ Programme

From 2006 to 2010, the AIA organised a programme of regular speaking tours every two years by Prof Shai Feldman of Brandeis Univeity. He was formerly Head of the Jaffa Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University. Its current director, General Amos Yadlin who previously served as head of Military Intelligence and deputy commander of the Israeli Air Force, gave a round table briefing in 2012 for the AIA on 'The Security Challenges of the State of Israel in the 21st Century with a focus on the Iranian Nuclear Threat'

Feldman presently serves on the Board of Directors of Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Feldman received from AIA £33,604 in 2009 and £81,556 in 2010. It is not clear if this money went all to Friedman or also for general organisation expenses. In 2012, Feldman gave lectures at the Conservative Middle East Council, Henry Jackson Society and the Israel Diaspora Trust.

In 2010, AIA started collaboration with Prof. Benny Morris from Ben Gurion University and Dr. Emanuele Ottolenghi of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. In 2011 Benny Morris gave lectures sponsored by AIA at the London School of Economics and the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Ottolenghi has written op-eds for the National Review, New York Sun, Jerusalem Post, the Guardian, mostly focusing on Israel and Iran. He claimed in 2003 on The Guardian that ‘anti-zionism is anti-semitism’, writing: 'by negating Zionism, by claiming that Zionism equals racism, goes further and denies the Jews the right to identify, understand and imagine themselves - and consequently behave as - a nation. Anti-Zionists deny Jews a right that they all too readily bestow on others, first of all Palestinians.'

He has appeared twice at the UK House of Commons invited by the Henry Jackson Society and on both occasions he pushed for attacks/ sanctions against Iran. In 2011 Ottolenghi also spoke at Pembroke College (Cambridge), Lincoln College (Oxford) and at the University of York.

AIA sponsored the programme ‘Israel: Historical, Political and Social Aspects’, a series of lectures, workshops and conferences at the University of Oxford. Other supporters of the programme are The Rothschild Foundation Europe, Lewis Family Charitable Trust and The Porter Foundation. The Lewis Family Charitable Trust also funds the AIA.

AIA/Sternberg Award

The AIA/Sternberg is an annual award given for lasting contribution to the furtherance of good relations between Britain and Israel’. The prize has a value of £1000.

Recipients to date:

• Moshe and Hannah Raviv. Moshe Raviv was ambassador to Israel from 1993 to 1997. He is the author of 'Israel at Fifty: Five Decades of Struggle for Peace'.
• Lady Sainsbury and Patricia Park
• Canon Andrew White
• Lady Cocks
• Sir Patrick Moberly and Lilian Hochhauser. Sir Patrick was Ambassador to Israel, from 1981 to1984, and then continued as Ambassador to South Africa from 1984 to 1988.

2012 winner: David Pryce-Jones. Born on 15 February 1936 Vienna, Austria) Jones is a conservative British author and commentator. In his 1989 book 'The Closed Circle', Pryce-Jones examined what he considered to be the reasons for the backward state of the Arab world. A review described the book as more of an 'indictment' than an examination of the Arab world. Pryce-Jones considers as a negative factor in Arab society the influence of Islam, which hinders efforts to build a Western style society where the family and clan are not the dominant political unit. 3In his acceptance speech for the award he stated:

Throughout the continent, the lingering death of the basic instinct of self-preservation is in complete political, intellectual and emotional opposition to Israel’s will to survive. The vilification and criminalisation of Israel for defending itself has the further consequence of making Jews out to be destroyers of the peace, and that is an indispensable step in normalising the 1930s and the Holocaust. Israel is currently presented by Islamism and its supporters with a test greater than any other in the state’s history, but it has the life-force to deal with whatever materialises.

Scholarships

21 scholarships were granted in 2012. In 2011, Daniel Hochhauser, vice chairman of AIA, debated against the academic boycott of Israel in an event at LSE.

Wyndham Deedes Memorial Travel Scholarship

The Anglo-Israel Association annually awards a limited number of travel scholarships to Israel. The objective of the awards is to enable graduates of British universities, who are normally resident in the UK to make an intensive study of some aspect, (sociological, scientific, cultural, economic, etc.) of life in Israel.

Kenneth Lindsay Scholarship Trust

The Kenneth Lindsay Scholarship Trust awards grants to enable students from Israel to advance their education in any subject at universities and institutions of higher learning in the UK. The awards attempt to encourage close collaboration between individuals of both countries. .

Funding

The total fund balances of the AIA on 31 December 2012 were £683,306. Of this amount, £577,880 belong to the MCA Endowment Fund, ‘a separate fund for the purpose of promoting education in particular and information in general about Israel’. The donor has specified that the capital, which is to be invested on professional advice in order to obtain the maximum long-term total return may be spent provided that ‘the total of income and realised and unrealised gains spent in any full financial year of the Association does not exceed 8% of the original grant of £523,000 at 31 December 2000’.

The current level of unrestricted funds not committed or invested in tangible fixed assets is £120,251.

The total incoming resource in 2011 was £186,800 and £141,236 in 2012. In 2012, £51,387 came from donations. £55,781 came from the annual dinner, £2,210 from subscriptions, £6,000 from patrons and £23,374 from Investment income. The total expenditure of the AIA in 2012 was £168,308. Of this sum, £104,742 was spent on 'Promoting education about Israel', £24,744 on the Ambassador Round Table, £10,425 on Meetings, Briefings & Conferences, £ 5,285 on clergy visits in Israel, £ 8,670 on AIA magazines, and £5000 on grants.

The Charles Wolfson Charitable Trust

The Charles Wolfson Charitable Trust is a charity run by Lord Wolfson of Sunningdale, who served as Thatcher‘s chief of staff. Simon Wolfson, son of Charles Wolfson, is the chief executive of the clothing retailer Next and a Conservative life peer. He was named by the Daily Telegraph as the 37th most important British conservative in 2007. He is married to Eleanor Shawcross who is an economic advisor to George Osborne. On 18 June 2010, Wolfson was created Baron Wolfson of Aspley Guise, of Aspley Guise in the County of Bedfordshire, and was introduced in the House of Lords on 6 July 2010. The Charles Wolfson Trust was set up in 1960 to provide grants ‘with particular, but not exclusive, regard to the needs of the Jewish community’. The trust has funded right-wing think tanks including Civitas, Policy Exchanges, the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Adam Smith Research Trust. In 2007 the trust donated £5,000 to the AIA.

G.R.P Charitable Trust

In 2011 the Trust made donations totalling £168,900.00. The largest donations in the year were £50,000.00 to the Jerusalem Foundation, £25,000.00 to Traditional Alternatives Foundation, £15,000.00 to Youth Aliyah - Child Rescue, £14,000.00 to the Weizmann Institute Foundation and £10,000.00 each to the Friends of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the United Jewish Israel Appeal. It has made regular donations to AIA (£13,500 in 2009, £2,125.00 in 2011 and £2,000.00 in 2012).

Lewis Family Charitable Trust

The Lewis Family Charitable Trust, constitute in 1969, is almost entirely funded from the Lewis Trust Group, an investment company that operates retail stores, real estate and hotels. From 12 June 2008, the trust exists to implement the charitable intentions of the family of David Lewis. David Lewis (June 2 1924- August 12 2011) was also a key supporter of the Israel Centre for Social and Economic Progress, the country’s main free-market think tank, and of the Conservative Friends of Israel. The Lewis Family Charitable Trust gave £10,000 to Policy Exchange in 2007/8, £20,000 in 2008/9 and £10,000 in 2009/10. It has also funded Palestinian Media Watch, the United Jewish Israel Appeal and the Zionist Federation. It donated $10,000 to AIA in 2008.

Stanley Kalms Foundation

The main objectives of the Foundation are the ‘encouragement of orthodox Jewish education in the UK and in Israel and to be particularly involved in the granting of scholarships, fellowships and research grants. Other activities include support for the arts and medicine and other programmes both secular and religious.’ The Foundation was created by Lord and Lady Kalms by a Trust Deed on 4 July 1989. Harold Stanley Kalms, Baron Kalms, Kt, (born 21 November 1931) is the life president and former chairman of DSG International plc (formerly Dixons Group). Lord Kalms was treasurer of the Conservative Party 2001-3 and the Director of the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) think tank from 1991 to 2001. Lord Kalms attacked William Hague for his position on the Israel attack in Lebanon, calling him an ’ignorant armchair critic’ and that his remarks were ‘downright dangerous’ The Foundation donated £5000 to AI in 20013.