Sir Mick Davis, a former CEO of the British Conservative Party, and Mike Prashker, the founder of Merchavim: The Institute for the Advancement of Shared Citizenship, are convinced that the majority of Israelis and world Jewry agree on three fundamental things for Israel: the need for a mature liberal democracy; a fairer society for all citizens of Israel; and secure peace.

Their belief in this “triangle” serves the basis for their new joint effort, The London Initiative, a fledgling, growing network that currently includes some 60 “senior and accomplished individuals” — roughly half from Israel and half from the Diaspora — but will eventually comprise roughly 360, all of whom agree with those three principles. 

Through the project, cohorts of 60 people will gather in the United Kingdom for multiday conferences, with the goal of connecting the participants and demonstrating to them that while they may feel that the Israeli body politic may be moving to the right, away from that “triangle,” they are not alone.

“Mike coined a term, which I think is a brilliant term, ‘the endangered majority’ — the people who feel strongly about the propositions that are on the table here, but feel cowed or disempowered to address them because they think that the boundaries of debate and discussion and action have moved so far away from these propositions,” Davis told eJewishPhilanthropy this week. “So we start off by actually wanting to say to these people that, in fact, yes, there has been a shift in what is perceived to be acceptable discourse in society… So we want to say to these people that actually the value propositions on which you formed your life view are legitimate and are valid, and our job is actually to bring that Overton window, those parameters of acceptable discourse, back to where we are in terms of the legitimate aspirations that we have and the values that we share. And we want to convert the endangered majorities into a vocal majority.”

According to Prashker, the idea for the initiative first emerged in January 2023, when the Israeli government announced its plans to significantly curtail the judiciary’s power over the executive branch. “I felt that it was an attack on Israel as a Jewish and democratic homeland for the Jewish people,” he said, referring to it as a “judicial coup.”

After the Oct. 7 terror attacks, Prashker said that he and Davis felt that as liberal Zionists they were compelled “to reverse the direction” in which they saw the State of Israel traveling. 

“Across the world, we see countries that have issues around fairness in society… There are some societies where democracy has moved from liberal to illiberal, and there are some societies which are at war because of their circumstances,” Davis said. “Israel is one of those few countries where we believe it has faced challenges across all three aspects.”

Davis added that since the country was dealing with multiple issues, it required a comprehensive solution. “You can’t actually build a resilient society unless these things are all resolved. You can’t just fix liberal democracy, because liberal democracy and liberal democratic values are impacted by a country which is at war. You can’t fix a fair society unless you have some democratic conventions that underpin it,” he said. 

Prashker, who has lived in Israel for more than 30 years, added that for him the changes in Israeli society are a personal issue as well. “I have three adult children, one of whom is in the reserve paratrooper brigade. I dropped him off in the south on Oct. 7 — the hardest journey I’ve made in my life. And for me, The London Initiative is also about showing my children that we have agency and that the future must be fought for,” he said. 

Davis echoed this desire for people to feel capable of taking action. “Now is the time, really, to start addressing it and not throw your hands up in the air and say, ‘Well, there’s an inevitability about this. This is how things are going to happen for the rest of time,’” he said.

After several months of discussion, The London Initiative was formally established last June. It held its first gathering on Feb. 16-18 and will hold five more over the next two years or so, the organization said. The names of the first participants will be familiar to those active in the Jewish community, particularly its more liberal or progressive spheres. They include: Yehuda Kurtzer, president of the Shalom Hartman Institute; Stav Shaffir-Stiva, a former Knesset member and social entrepreneur; Daniel Sokatch, CEO of the New Israel Fund; Jeff Solomon, senior advisor to Chasbro Investments; Angelica Berrie, president of the Russell Berrie Foundation; and Andres Spokoiny, president and CEO of Jewish Funders Network. 

“The idea of The London Initiative is essentially to challenge them to ‘up their game’ in terms of what they do going forward, how they should address these propositions to the audiences whom they influence and normalize,” Davis said.

“If the endangered majority then become a vocal thinking majority again, they will start influencing the political process,” he said. “If they sense a shift back of the Overton window, if they sense a shift in the normalization of these debates, in the credibility of these debates, so it could influence political thinking.”

Of the 360 members, roughly one-third will be philanthropists, one-third will be heads of institutions and one-third will be “thought leaders,” such as rabbis, journalists and public intellectuals, Prashker said.

Davis said that there was a certain expectation that the philanthropists involved would likely help support the initiatives that come out of the network.

“Our idea of having a wide variety of people at the table is because there is a capacity for them to leverage off each other in terms of impact. And it might well be that a philanthropist can support an initiative of someone who wants to do something because they can bring their financial capacity to bear. So that’s important for us,” he said.

Prashker added that such a situation already appears to be in the offing. “I had a conversation with a philanthropist who took part in the first retreat,” he said. “He might have a specific interest in giving a stronger voice to the status of women, [specifically], the status of women in the Haredi community and the role of women in the public space. So we’re delighted for that to happen.”

In addition to creating and strengthening relationships and empowering the attendees, the goal of the gathering was to get the participants to think more holistically about liberal Zionism and not only about the specific areas in which they operated. Both Prashker and Davis stressed the need for a partnership between Diaspora Jewry and Israel, saying that it was “decisive in going forward in terms of building the resilience of Israel as a national state of the Jewish people.”

Speaking on condition of anonymity to speak candidly about the February session, two participants of the first cohort told eJP that the gathering was engaging, interesting and critical, but that they were still unclear on what would come of the new initiative. Namely, if the gatherings would truly foster greater collaboration and fresh initiatives as its creators hope or just serve as yet another echo chamber for like-minded liberal Zionists. “Time will tell,” both of the participants said, independently of one another. Though the members of the network are not homogeneous — a range of religious backgrounds and, to a lesser extent, political affiliations were present — the participants who spoke to eJP noted that they do generally run in similar circles, with a few exceptions, such as former settler leader and now Anu Museum of the Jewish People CEO Oded Revivi, and the Arab participants, Abraham Initiatives co-director Shahira Shalaby and Rula Hardal, co-director of the Palestinian-Israeli initiative A Land for All.

Prashker said the initiative has already borne real-world fruit. “I was very gratified when I was told just the other day that as a result of London Initiative activities and the understanding [the need for a] clear voice that somebody had pulled out of the antisemitism conference in Jerusalem,” he said, referring to a gathering organized by the Israeli government, which is controversially including representatives from far-right European parties. “This was not the U.K. chief rabbi — although that’s very important — but somebody else who had pulled out because they understand that what might be good for this Israeli government’s partnership with neo-Nazis and neo-fascists across Europe is extremely bad for world Jewry and the national homeland of the Jewish people and that they will not play along. So confidence is a big part of this.”