On 8 May 2014 seven men met in an office a stone’s throw from the Bundestag in Berlin. There were three Americans, three Germans and one Israeli – Raanan Eliaz, co-founder and at that time director of the European Leadership Network (ELNET), set up to build relations between key European countries and Israel. Eliaz, a red-headed, boyish amateur poet, grew up in one of the first settlements in the West Bank and his background included working with AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), the leading pro-Israel lobbying organisation in the US, and with the Israeli prime minister’s office.

According to the meeting’s minutes, Eliaz underlined ‘the positive aspects of an internationally cross-linked system of associations with one aim’, highlighting that there was not yet an entity in the world of German-Israeli friendship that worked ‘specifically to involve decision-makers’. The purpose of the meeting that day was to remedy that by officially launching ELNET’s German chapter.

The idea behind ELNET’s creation in 2007 was to replicate American methods of pro-Israel lobbying in Europe. AIPAC had managed to make support for Israel politically rewarding and costly to oppose by coordinating substantial donations to political candidates and running aggressive media campaigns. But Europe, where the Jewish community was much smaller and politicians less reliant on donations, was not yet prepared for this type of political manoeuvring. To overcome this, ELNET cultivated wealthy Europeans sympathetic to Israel and encouraged them to participate in political spending campaigns on the AIPAC model, while developing other forms of influence, such as all-expenses-paid trips to Israel for politicians.

Today, ELNET employs dozens of staff and has six European offices (Paris, Berlin, Brussels, London, Warsaw and Rome) as well as its head office in Tel Aviv and a branch in New York (registered as Friends of ELNET). Its annual budget – up to $20m – (…)

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