{"id":600,"date":"2025-06-10T11:38:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-10T11:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reformnews.co.uk\/?p=600"},"modified":"2025-06-10T11:38:00","modified_gmt":"2025-06-10T11:38:00","slug":"foreign-office-staff-told-to-resign-if-they-dont-like-government-stance-on-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reformnews.co.uk\/?p=600","title":{"rendered":"Foreign Office staff told to resign if they don’t like Government stance on Israel."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

More than 300 Foreign Office staff have been told to consider resigning after they wrote a letter complaining they feared it had become complicit in Israel\u2019s alleged war crimes in Gaza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is the fourth such internal letter from staff about the offensive in\u00a0Gaza<\/a>, which started in October 2023 in response to Hamas\u2019s deadly attack on Israel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In July 2024, staff expressed concern about Israel\u2019s violations of international humanitarian law and potential UK government complicity. In the intervening period, the reality of Israel\u2019s disregard for international law has become m<\/em>ore stark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The letter went on to list ” It went on to list <\/em>“the killing by Israeli forces of 15 humanitarian workers in March and Israel\u2019s suspension of all aid to Gaza in the same month \u201cleading many experts and humanitarian organisations to accuse Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war<\/em>.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In their letter of 16 May the staff, from embassies around the world and at various levels of seniority, questioned the UK\u2019s continued arms sales and what they called Israel\u2019s \u201cstark \u2026 disregard for international law\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Foreign Office said it had systems for staff to raise concerns and added the government had \u201crigorously applied international law\u201d in relation to the war in Gaza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reply to the letter was sent by the permanent under-secretary, Oliver Robbins, and Nick Dyer, the second most senior civil servant in the Foreign Office. They told the signatories: \u201c[I]f your disagreement with any aspect of government policy or action is profound, your ultimate recourse is to resign from the civil service. This is an honourable course.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Foreign Office in its court submissions, likely to be the subject of cross-examination by the business committee, said it had determined Israel was not committing a genocide in Gaza, which appears to contradict the stance that only the UK courts can make such a ruling. It also said it could not take a position on specific attacks by Israel since it did not have definitive evidence.

Israel has consistently denied committing war crimes in Gaza, saying its actions are proportionate and necessary to eradicate Hamas, which it says uses hospitals and school premises to protect itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More than 300 Foreign Office staff have been told to consider resigning after they wrote a letter complaining they feared it had become complicit in Israel\u2019s alleged war crimes in Gaza. It is the fourth such internal letter from staff about the offensive in\u00a0Gaza, which started in October 2023 in response to Hamas\u2019s deadly attack […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":608,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reformnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reformnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reformnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reformnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reformnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=600"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/reformnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":609,"href":"https:\/\/reformnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600\/revisions\/609"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reformnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reformnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reformnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reformnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}