Israel began his career as an academic lecturing and researching on EU and human rights law at the universities of Nottingham and Lancaster in the UK. He has published a number of articles in leading academic journals and wrote a book about how to counter the rise of populist authoritarian governments that limit their people’s rights and freedoms. He joined Liberties in 2017 as the head of advocacy, and in this position he has worked to promote ideas on how the EU can better protect democracy and the rule of law in its member states.

In recent years, the EU has seen a disturbing rise of power-hungry authoritarian governments in several of its member states. But the EU continues to give billions and billions of euros to these governments to support projects and initiatives in their countries. I am working to convince EU decision-makers to implement mechanisms that can withhold funds from a member state that violate EU values.