Meet the pro-Israeli lawyers who want to restrict jury trials in England

On 10 March, the Labour government’s bill to restrict access to jury trials, a right enjoyed by English citizens for over 800 years, successfully passed its first reading in the houses of parliament.

As previously reported, the Minister for Courts, Sarah Sackman, announced plans for many criminal cases to be heard by only a judge and a magistrate, in order to reduce a backlog of ten of thousands of cases.

This is despite that fact that, in 2017, now justice secretary David Lammy concluded that juries “act as a filter for prejudice”, following an independent review commissioned by then prime minister David Cameron. In 2020, he said:

Jury trials are a fundamental part of our democratic settlement. Criminal trials without juries are a bad idea… The government needs to pull their finger out and acquire empty buildings across the country to make sure these [trials] can happen in a way that is safe … you don’t fix the backlog with trials that are widely perceived as unfair.

Now, Lammy wants to get rid of them.

My investigations reveal that this erosion of democracy has been shaped by Lammy and Sackman, two pro-Israeli lawyers-turned-politicians, who have both been captured by lobbyists and arms traders.

Jury trials and Sarah Sackman

Keir Starmer initially appointed Sarah Sackman as solicitor-general. Now, she is Labour’s minister of state for courts and legal services. But Sackman previously worked as a judicial clerk in the Israeli Supreme Court. She has also stated that she “travels to Israel on a yearly basis”.

From 2015-2024, Sackman was the vice-chair of the pro-Israeli Jewish Labour Movement. Indeed, the Jewish Labour Movement, which was known as “Poale Zion” until 2004, openly declares that one of its aims is “to promote the centrality of Israel in Jewish life”. In 2015, Sackman said:

The issue of Israel is something that is deeply personal and emotional.

In May 2024, Sackman opposed International Criminal Court arrest warrants for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defence minister Yoav Gallant, saying:

I trust the Israeli people to hold their leaders to account.

Just three months later, a poll revealed that 65% of Jewish Israelis opposed criminal prosecution for IDF soldiers suspected of gang rape. Israeli society responded to the Sde Teiman abuse scandal by holding “right to rape” protests, and the Israeli state responded by arresting the chief military advocate who had leaked the video of the abuse.

On 12 March, all remaining charges of “aggravated abuse” and “causing aggravated injury” against the five soldiers (charges of rape were never brought) were dropped. This is the society that Sackman trusts to “hold their leaders to account”.

Sackman has received tens of thousands of pounds from lobbyists Jonathan Mendelsohn, Stephen Grabiner, Michael Sternberg, Jonathan Kestenbaum and Trevor Chinn. She was also funded by Labour Together, the corrupt outfit of Morgan McSweeney fame. Labour MP Luke Akehurst called McSweeney a “pivotal figure” and “solid supporter of Israel”.

Lammy is in Zionist pockets

Like Starmer, Lammy is a parliamentary supporter of Labour Friends of Israel and has a long history of promoting the pro-Israeli lobby in Britain.

In February 2025, Lammy had an “off-the-record” meeting with former Labour Together director and life-long Israel lobbyist Trevor Chinn. In 2012, they travelled together on a Labour Friends of Israel-funded trip. The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs also chipped in with £90 towards expenses.

In 2014, Chinn donated £30,000 to Lammy’s failed London mayoral campaign. The campaign was led by David Mencer, a former Labour Friends of Israel director who later became a spokesperson for the Israeli government, a veritable rent-a-mouth defending the most heinous of crimes.

Lammy’s mayoral campaign was also bankrolled by Jonathan Goldstein, a Chelsea FC co-owner who personally hosted Starmer in a Stamford Bridge box.

Financial backers

Goldstein travelled to occupied Palestine and met with Israeli state ministers, including Gilad Erdan. After becoming head of the Jewish Leadership Council that same year, Goldstein stated his intent to “make the community louder and prouder on Israel”. He describes convicted criminal Gerald Ronson as “a very strong influence” on him, admiringly noting that the Ronsons are:

driven for the cause of the Jewish people in Britain and in Israel.

Other financial backers include Sue Woodford-Hollick, the wife of Labour peer Clive Hollick. Hollick contributed £50,000 to Starmer’s 2020 leadership campaign and was another funder of McSweeney’s Labour Together outfit. He previously served as a special adviser to both Epstein-associate Mandelson and long-standing Labour Friend of Israel Margaret Beckett. Hollick is also a director of Honeywell, a US conglomerate that claims to provide “battle-tested technologies” to “the most advanced defence forces in the world”.

Jury trials are not a filter for prejudice

Lammy’s previous claim that juries “act as a filter for prejudice” is now in conflict with the biases of his backers. It is also clear that Sackman’s trust in Israeli society’s ability to hold its leaders to account is not extended to UK citizens. It is far from a coincidence that this assault on the right to trial by jury is accompanied by the fact that juries have repeatedly refused to convict pro-Palestine actionists, who have done more than the UK government to stop a genocide. Clearly, the Labour party is entirely in the pockets of Zionist lobbyists whose undue interference in our democratic processes is extremely troubling, to say the least.

Lammy and his co-conspirators are determined to undermine our right to a trial by a jury of our peers nonetheless. By examining the political ideology – Zionism – that underpins Starmer’s cabinet, we can begin to understand why.

Featured image via the Canary