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Reform UK’s suspended head of policy James Orr is the UK chairman of a foundation which hosted an Israeli minister, Bezazel Smotrich, sanctioned by Britain for inciting violence against Palestinians, Byline Times can reveal.
Orr’s fellow director at the Edmund Burke Foundation, and its founding chairman, is Yoram Hazony, an Israeli-American Bible scholar who previously praised Rabbi Meir Kahane – the late creator of the Kach movement that was banned by Israel as a terrorist organisation.
The foundation’s latest National Conservatism conference known as “NatCon” took place in Jerusalem earlier in the first week of October and was sponsored by an Israeli NGO sanctioned by both the EU and Canada due to lobbying for the demolition of Palestinian property.
The event has fast become an alliance between the Israeli extreme right and established right-wing forces in the US, Britain and Europe, from President Donald Trump’s administration to Reform and the Conservatives.
Previous NatCon events have been addressed by JD Vance (just before he was appointed Trump’s Vice President), Reform UK leader Nigel Farage and three Conservative MPs who have since joined his party. Vance has also credited NatCon founder Hazony’s work with influencing his politics.
The conference programme for NatCon’s Jerusalem event also advertised Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, who publicly defended Lehava, a group Britain has sanctioned and whose leader, Ben-Zion Gopstein, is a disciple of Meir Kahane.
At the NatCon event in Jerusalem, Israeli finance minister Bezalel Yoel Smotrich called for permanent Israeli sovereignty over territory held in Gaza and Lebanon, and urged Muslim countries to receive Gazans wishing to leave, presenting the proposal as voluntary rather than forced removal. Britain sanctioned him in June 2025 over his role in inciting violence against Palestinian civilians, imposing an asset freeze and travel ban.
Orr, an Associate Professor of the Philosophy of Religion at Cambridge, is UK Chairman of the Edmund Burke Foundation and a director of its British company, alongside the foundation’s founder, Yoram Hazony. Hazony is also chairman and a director of the US foundation, which organised the Jerusalem event.
Orr stepped aside as Reform UK’s head of policy on 4 September, after a Channel 4 News undercover report on foreign donations filmed him apparently soliciting illegal donations. An internal investigation by Reform UK this week concluded there was no wrongdoing.
However, a spokesperson for Reform UK told Byline Times that “James Orr stepped down from his role in September and his status hasn’t changed.”
Orr is a prominent intellectual architect of the National Conservatism movement and has been a primary organiser for major NatCon events in Europe and the UK. He did not respond to requests for comment regarding his role in the NatCon event in Jerusalem and his continued role as UK chairman of the host foundation.
Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, chief rabbi of Safed, spoke on the Jewish character of the Israeli state at the NatCon event in Jerusalem. In September 2021, he had joined senior rabbis in a public letter opposing moves in Israel to outlaw Lehava as a terrorist organisation. Lehava campaigns against relationships between Jews and non-Jews.
The UK Government sanctioned Lehava in May 2024, citing its role in facilitating, inciting and promoting violence against Arab and Palestinian communities. On 8 September this year, Britain also sanctioned the group’s leader, Ben-Zion Gopstein, for supporting and inciting violence against Palestinians.
Gopstein is a disciple of Meir Kahane, founder of the racist, ultra-nationalist Kach party, which called for the forced segregation of Jews and non-Jews, and advocated the forced removal of Arabs who refused to accept non-citizen status from Israel. Prior to that, Kahane had founded the Jewish Defense League, classified by the FBI as a right-wing terror group for bombings and shootings against Soviet, Arab, and diplomatic targets. Israel itself would ban Kahane’s Kach party as a terrorist organisation in 1994.
NatCon founder Yarom Hazony, who directs the Edmund Burke Foundation’s UK company with James Orr, praised Meir Kahane in a 1990 Jerusalem Post obituary. He recalled hearing Kahane at Princeton, writing of the racist terrorist that he “thrilled and enchanted us”.
Hazony credited that encounter with religious changes among his circle, while explicitly rejecting Kahane’s politics and violent methods. He wrote: “Neither I nor any of my friends from college ever adopted Kahane’s political views.”
Byline Times can also confirm that one of the conference’s organisational sponsors included Regavim, an Israeli NGO that the EU says lobbied for the demolition of Palestinian property. The EU sanctioned Regavim in May 2026, and Canada listed it the following month.
The Edmund Burke Foundation’s role in receiving sponsorship from a EU and Canada sanctioned organisation raises questions about the legitimacy of EU nationals participating in the NatCon event. The EU sanctioned the group on 28 May, freezing its assets and barring EU persons from making funds available to it.
The programme listed speakers from at least six EU member states, including Austria’s Harald Vilimsky, who leads the Freedom Party of Austria’s delegation in the European Parliament and is a vice-chair of the Patriots for Europe group; Spain’s Miguel Ángel Quintana Paz of the far-right Institute of Social, Economic and Political Sciences (ISSEP); Poland’s former president Andrzej Duda; Germany’s Hans-Georg Maaßen, of the Values Union; Hungary’s Balázs Orbán, an MP and former political director to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán; and Swedish former diplomat Henrik Schildt.
The foundation’s hosting of UK sanctioned individuals also raises questions about its compliance with UK financial sanctions laws, which prohibit making funds or economic resources available, directly or indirectly, to or for the benefit of a sanctioned person. UK businesses are also expected to comply with all applicable UK sanctions regulations. Failing to do so can incur fines or criminal prosecution.
Neither the foundation nor its founder Hazony responded to request for comment. The UK Foreign Office told Byline Times that “this matter is for the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI).” The OFSI, however, declined to comment.
NatCon has become a fulcrum of the international far right. In an interview with the late Charlie Kirk, reported by Byline Times in April, Orr named Germany’s Alternative for Germany, France’s National Rally and other far-right parties across Europe as groups National Conservatism was “helping to” coordinate.
This week’s programme put that ambition into practice. It billed Trump’s counterterrorism official Sebastian Gorka, a deputy assistant to the President and one of six featured speakers, in the same plenary as Harald Vilimsky of Austria’s far-right Freedom Party. It also listed the former Conservative MP Miriam Cates and Paul Coleman, chief executive of the Prosperity Institute, which is operated by Paul Marshall’s Legatum partners, with whom he owns GB News.
NatCon’s British reach extends to serving and former ministers. At the 2023 London conference, Suella Braverman, now a Reform MP, addressed delegates as Home Secretary. Michael Gove, now editor of The Spectator, also owned by Marshall, spoke as Levelling Up Secretary, and Sir John Hayes, who remains a Conservative MP, was another speaker.
Danny Kruger and Lee Anderson, both now Reform MPs, attended; as did Matthew Goodwin, Reform’s failed candidate in February’s Gorton and Denton by-election.
NatCon’s American reach includes some of the most influential organisations in US conservatism. Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts spoke at the Jerusalem event’s opening plenary alongside Smotrich and Hazony. Heritage convened Project 2025, the authoritarian plan for reshaping the US Government for Trump’s second presidency.
The Silicon Valley billionaire and pro-Trump mega-donor Peter Thiel has also spoken at NatCon and signed its statement of principles, alongside Orr and Hazony.
Nafeez Ahmed is Head of Investigations at Byline Times
