"Mark Smith, a diplomat who quit his Foreign Office job over the UK's refusal to stop selling arms to Israel, said civil servants who question the onslaught in Gaza are routinely silenced by their seniors. Thousands of conversations within the walls of the Foreign Office on the most controversial aspects of our arms sales policy will never be seen by the public [and] never be put to a court, he said on Friday in London,"
"I was routinely asked to go to senior directors' offices and told to, quote, make the situation look less bad, said Smith, who was a diplomat and policy adviser at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. Sections that I've written which talked about civilian casualties, for example, I was asked to kind of play them down, make them smaller. He described the office's working culture as very strange and different to anything I've ever experienced in the civil service."
"He said it is fully understood in the department that conversations about the UK's conduct and relationship with Israel should take place in person and not in writing."
Mark Smith resigned from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office in August 2024 over continued UK arms exports to Israel during the Gaza genocide. He reported that civil servants who questioned the military onslaught were routinely silenced by senior officials and warned against documenting concerns in writing. He said thousands of internal conversations about controversial arms sales policy will never be public or available to courts. He described repeated instructions to make reports 'look less bad' and to downplay sections on civilian casualties. He said departmental culture prioritized appearing legally compliant and encouraged in-person discussion to avoid written records being court-requested.
Read at www.aljazeera.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]