The president of the UK branch of the Jewish National Fund (JNF), an organisation involved in the displacement of Palestinians, has failed to be re-elected as a councillor for the right-wing Reform UK party.
Alan Mendoza was a Conservative councillor in Westminster before defecting to Reform UK last year. He is reportedly a chief adviser to the party on global affairs.
In Thursday’s local elections, he lost in the Abbey Road ward in Westminster to Conservative candidates.
Mendoza is the executive director of the right-wing think tank the Henry Jackson Society and the head of the JNF UK.
The British charity has donated £1m ($1.36m) to “Israel’s largest militia” and has Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court, as an honorary patron.
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The UK branch has also supported Israeli settlements, which are illegal under international law.
As a registered charity, JNF UK receives tax relief on donations. The organisation’s accounts show that between 2015 and 2018 it paid over £1m to Hashomer Hachadash (HH), a Zionist militia that operates in the occupied West Bank.
Israeli newspaper Haaretz described the organisation as having gone from being a “fringe right-wing organisation” to “Israel’s largest militia”.
Several Reform candidates and lawmakers have expressed support for Israel.
One of those candidates, evangelical pastor John Quintanilla, said the existence “of the land of Palestine” was a “media lie started by Yasser Arafat”, Byline Times reported earlier this week.
In a November 2025 sermon, Quintanilla said: “There is no land called Palestine… It is a media lie started by Yasser Arafat, an Egyptian.”
Later in the sermon, he said: “If you look at the history of Islam, where it has conquered and warred and colonised, all you will see is poverty, war and darkness.”
Reform UK made huge gains in the local elections, winning more than 440 councils by Friday afternoon, with more results still to be announced.
Labour lost hundreds of councillors, with its tally standing just over 260 at the time of publishing.
