About Us
Yachad is a British Jewish organisation whose primary mission is to empower British Jews to support a political resolution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict.
Our focus is advocating for a resolution to the conflict, as we believe that only through a political resolution will Israel thrive and prosper – alongside a viable and independent Palestinian state. Yachad believes that the occupation, which denies millions of Palestinians their basic civil and political rights, must end if a resolution to the conflict is to be achieved.
Yachad is significant voice within the mainstream British-Jewish community. We have thousands of supporters, are members of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, and work closely with a variety of communal bodies. We work closely with civil society and political partners in Israel and MPs across the political spectrum in the UK.
Our theory of change and how we work
- We work within the Jewish community to ensure that mainstream organisations – that represent the voices of our community to the media, the British and Israeli governments and opinion formers – represent the broad diversity of opinion that exists within the community about Israel. Communal organisations shape and influence public and political opinion on the conflict and therefore we want to influence how they do this, and to guarantee the voices of our supporters and the nuanced views that exist in our community are heard.
- As British citizens we are able to influence foreign and domestic policy related to the conflict – we work with British MPs cross party to ensure they are exposed to the voices of our supporters and the broad diversity of opinion that exists within the community, and the voices that matter most – those working daily for human rights, democracy and peace in Israel-Palestine.
- We work with partners on the ground – civil society organisations and politicians in Israel and Palestine – to ensure their voices, which represent a constituency in the region that wants change, are heard in the UK within the Jewish community and the British parliament.
The Yachad Team
Hannah Weisfeld
Executive Director
Hannah Weisfeld is the Executive Director and a founder of Yachad. She regularly briefs senior politicians, MPs and decision makers on issues related to the Israel-Palestine conflict, as well as providing background information to the media. She has appeared on Radio and TV including BBC Radio 4, BBC World Service, BBC News and Al Jazeera, and has written extensively and been quoted in international broadsheets including The Guardian, The Washington Post and Ha’aretz. She speaks regularly in public on issues related to the conflict including in the British parliament, UK universities and Jewish community settings in the UK. She has spent significant time in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.
Hannah has a master’s degree from the London School of Economics and an undergraduate degree from the University of Sussex. She is a trustee of a number of charities including Masambiro UK, which works to provide educational opportunities for young people in an area of Malawi where Hannah has spent time living and working, and co-chair of trustees for Habonim Dror UK, the Jewish youth organisation she was heavily involved in during her teens and early twenties. She lives in London with her husband and two daughters.
Danielle Bett
Director of Communications
Prior to joining Yachad in 2021, Danielle worked as the Jewish Leadership Council’s Scotland Manager. She has worked on a number of interfaith and antiracism initiatives with a focus on Muslim-Jewish alliances. She has also worked closely with the Israeli community in Scotland, and founded the Scottish Israeli Cultural Association – a non-political, non-religious initiative for Israelis living in Scotland.
Before working with the Jewish community, Danielle spent several years working in Financial Services, in a variety of fields including communications and employee engagement.
She has a degree in International Relations and Spanish from the University of St. Andrews. Danielle is Scottish-Israeli and speaks English, Hebrew and Spanish.
Jon Freedman
Director of Fundraising
Before joining Yachad in 2023, Jon worked for a number of Jewish organisations, including Limmud, Finchley Reform Synagogue, West London Synagogue and Clore Shalom Primary School. His work has encompassed fundraising, charity management, informal education and events. Jon’s connection to Israel began in his early teens and twenties, when he was heavily involved with RSY-Netzer, the Jewish youth organisation. He is inspired by the power of community work – bringing people together to find common ground, empowering people to work together for positive change.
Jon has a degree in Political Science and Philosophy from the University of Birmingham, where his final year of studies examined the history of the ideas around the State of Israel’s birth.
Elinor Milne
Director of Community Engagement
As Director of Community Engagement, Elinor works with and within Jewish communities and communal organisations to promote a political resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Before joining Yachad in 2024, Elinor worked for seven years supporting human rights monitoring in the West Bank. Previous roles include advocacy against violence against children and for street-connected children's rights. Her work has focussed on building networks and partnerships and supporting individuals and organizations to campaign for change.
She is an active member of a progressive synagogue and was part of organizing the Open Talmud Project, a cross-movement Jewish text study programme. She holds a master's degree in children's rights and an undergraduate degree in philosophy.
Dalia Blass
Youth and Student Outreach Worker
Dalia recently graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a 1st Class degree in Classics (MA Hons). She has been actively involved in the Jewish community from an early age, including over a decade in the Zionist youth movement Noam. She has led a wide range of programmes for children and young people in both Jewish and non-Jewish spaces. Dalia is also passionate about social justice issues outside of the Jewish community, having volunteered with grassroots organisations in northern Greece that support asylum seekers and refugees from all over the Middle East.
Raphael Korber Hoffman
Communications and Policy Manager
Before joining Yachad, Raphael worked as a researcher at a political risk consultancy and has also interned at a non-profit organization working on pro-bono legal services. He completed a BA (Hons) in Human, Social, and Political Sciences at King’s College, University of Cambridge before undertaking a MSc in International Relations at the London School of Economics, which included studying the international relations of the Middle East. Holding an interest in the politics of the region, Raphael first got involved with Yachad through completing the CPD-accredited course on ‘The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Narratives and Realities’ and attending student events.
The Yachad Board
View Board MembersSimon Sadie
Chair
Simon Sadie has been the Chair of Yachad since March 2019, and a Trustee since 2017. He is a senior executive leader at the global marketing services group, WPP, operating as a WPP Global Client Leader and also a Global Client President at EssenceMediacom, one of WPP's media agencies. He is a member of Hampstead Garden Suburb Synagogue and previously served as a founding Chair of the UJIA Business Division.
Daniel Oppeinheimer
Vice-Chair
Daniel has been Vice-Chair of Yachad since April 2022. He is currently the Chief Operating Officer of the Royal British Legion, the UK’s largest charity for former members of the armed forces and their families, where he is responsible for a wide range of strategic functions including finance, technology, property governance, sustainability and inclusion. He previously had similar roles at Shelter, the housing charity and Nesta, the innovation organisation. He is also a trustee of the Centre for Ageing Better, a thinktank and experimental research funder where he chairs the Finance Investment and Audit Committee. He is actively involved in New North London Synagogue where he leads services and volunteers in education and pastoral work. He is a regular visitor to Israel where he has family and friends, and has a life-long interest in the politics and history of the Middle East. He is married with three children and lives in Finchley.
Natasha Collet
Natasha has spent the last five years working in the Labour Party, most recently as a political adviser to Yvette Cooper MP. She has a background in policy and communications and is currently studying law with a strong interest in human rights. Natasha joins the board having been engaged with Yachad’s work since attending the student trip in 2015.
Mike Katz
Mike Katz is National Chair of the Jewish Labour Movement, the sole Jewish affiliate to the Labour Party. He is a member of the Party's antisemitism advisory board and a long-standing Labour activist. He stood for Labour as a parliamentary candidate in Hendon in the 2017 general election, in the 2016 London Assembly elections and was a Camden councillor from 2010-14. Professionally, he works in policy and campaigns in the transport sector, and also sits on the Daily Mirror’s Editorial Advisory Board. He has served as a trustee of West London Synagogue, where he is a member.
Esther Craven
Esther currently works in the Strategy and Engagement team at the London Borough of Islington Council. Previously, Esther worked at Yachad for over three years, first as Youth and Student Worker and then as Director of Community Engagement and has served at a Deputy on the Board of Deputies. Esther studied languages at the University of Manchester and also has a background in translation.
Guy Swimer
Guy is an award-winning advertising creative director, who joined the board in 2019. Originally from Manchester, he has a youth group background, and a long-standing commitment to campaigns for peace, dialogue & co-existence globally.
Jack Lubner
Jack is a final year history student who has been involved with Yachad for a number of years. He has helped to lead campaigns on issues surrounding islamophobia and the proposed annexation of West Bank territories. He has been active within various parts of Jewish communal life, including serving on UJS’s National Council, leading with RSY-Netzer and representing his synagogue on the Board of Deputies. As Youth & Students Officer at the Jewish Labour Movement, he has helped fight antisemitism and worked with university Labour clubs to raise awareness of the issues that Jewish students face.
Rob Geist Pinfold
Dr. Rob Geist Pinfold is a Lecturer in International Peace and Security at Durham University and a Research Fellow at the Peace Research Center Prague. He is also a Research Fellow at the National Security Studies Center at the University of Haifa, the Centre for Grand Strategy at King’s College London and the Herzl Center for Israel Studies at Charles University in Prague. Rob holds a PhD in War Studies from King’s College London. Previously, Rob worked as a Lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and as a Research Fellow at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies. He is a scholar of international security whose research intersects the study of strategy and territorial conflict. He has authored three published or forthcoming books: Understanding Israel: Political, Security and Societal Challenges (Routledge, 2018), The Routledge Handbook of Israeli Foreign Policy (forthcoming with Routledge, 2023) and Understanding Territorial Withdrawal: Israeli Occupations and Exits (forthcoming with Oxford University Press, 2023). A British-Israeli, he divides his time between the UK and Israel.
Amos Schonfield
Amos is CEO of two small charities, supporting marginalised communities both inside and outside the Jewish community to flourish. He joined Yachad as a student activist in 2011. Since then he has been an activist, volunteer, staff member, and represented the organisation on the Board of Deputies from 2015 to 2021, where he sat on the International Division. He worked at Noam Masorti Youth between 2014 and 2016.
Frequently Asked Questions
We are proud to say that in the twelve years since Yachad was founded, we’ve grown and evolved as an organisation and a movement. We want our branding to reflect that.
We’ve made a lot of progress – we are seeing more and more members of the Jewish community engage on the issue of Israel-Palestine and the occupation in a nuanced way – especially the next generation; the future leadership of our community.
When designing our new brand and reflecting on how we work, we’ve taken into account the shifting conversations on anti-racism in the UK and globally, the rise of the far-right in Israel, deepening occupation and the rise of violence against Israeli and Palestinian civilians.
The challenge is greater than ever, but so are the opportunities to make change. We continue to work closely with Israelis and Palestinians working to shift the narrative and create change.
Our decision to include the Arabic word for Yachad (which means together), “ma’an”, was born of an understanding that whilst Yachad is about mobilising a uniquely Jewish pro-Israel voice, we stand in support of Palestinian voices too.
We want to make it clear that being a supporter of Israel does not stand in opposition to being a supporter of Palestinian human rights and self-determination. We want to demonstrate that we fully support progressive political change within Israel, which can only come about through political partnership between both Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel.
We believe that only through a political resolution will Israel thrive and prosper – alongside a viable and independent Palestinian state – there is no two state solution without recognising two states.
There are three areas where we aim to make change:
In the Jewish community: Mainstream organisations represent the Jewish community when speaking to the media, the British government and MPs, the Israeli embassy and more. They contribute to shaping public and political opinion on Israel and the conflict. We want to ensure that the diversity of opinion that exists in our community is represented by our communal institutions
In politics: We work with British MPs cross-party to ensure they are exposed to the broad diversity of opinion that exists within the community, so when foreign policy on matters related to Israel Palestine is decided, decision makers have a fuller picture of how the community perceives this issue
Grassroots: We work with partners on the ground - civil society organisations and politicians – who want change and advocate for peace, justice and equality. We want their voices to be heard within the Jewish community and the British parliament – and to ensure that their work is supported by those in power in the UK.
- Education about the conflict, helping community members become more confident in voicing nuanced views. We host online and in-person events, as well as trips to Israel-Palestine, with a variety voices from the region.
- We work with British Jewish youth movements, Jewish students and Jewish societies, to help educate on Israeli Palestinian issues including history, politics and develop confidence and skills speaking about these issues. We want to build the next generation of community leaders who are unafraid to advocate for their beliefs.
- Encouraging our supporters to become more involved in mainstream community organisations, working to ensure their opinions are better represented
- We couldn’t do our work without our partners on the ground. We work with a wide variety of civil-society and human rights organisations that fight against the occupation, advocate for equality, peace, democracy and justice. The people we learn from every day are those based in Israel and Palestine.
- Keeping that in mind, we want to ensure those voices are heard in the Jewish community and in parliament – we host events and briefings on various issues with experts and leaders on the ground.
- We often bring people from Israel to the UK to speak about key issues – from settlement expansion, to Palestinians elections to pro-democracy protests in Israel.
- We also bring members of the Jewish community from the UK to Israel and Palestine on trips where they can meet with experts, advocates and activists.
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