1 min read
ByAndrew Percy , Andrew Percy
For a Diversity Lead at the Department of Work and Pensions to campaign for George Galloway beggars belief
March 6, 2024 16:54The JC’s latest revelations about the civil service are deeply disturbing. The fact that these are not just isolated incidents suggests something more concerning from an institutional point of view.
The fact that a Diversity Lead at the Department of Work and Pensions has been filmed campaigning for George Galloway, a man whose entire movement makes many Jews feel scared and unsafe, just beggars belief. For a civil servant to refer to themselves as an “activist, journalist and campaigner” on their social media accounts does raise serious questions about impartiality and whether such actions are a breach of the Civil Service Code.
I struggle to comprehend how any Jewish employee would feel able to approach such an individual for protection in the work place in such circumstances and I have raised concerns about this at a senior level.
It’s not just the DWP. At the Foreign Office, the incidents exposed by the JC are particularly concerning. We rely on Foreign Office diplomats and officials to make judgments with regard to the conflict in Gaza, for example about the compatibility of different sides of the conflict with international law.
Now we find that those judgments may have been poisoned by a hateful, Hamas-inspired ideology that has been introduced to British officials inside the Foreign Office itself.
In January, the JC revealed that a sexual violence adviser at the Foreign Office had signed a petition dismissing reports of rape committed by Hamas on October 7 as “propaganda” to justify “genocide” of the Palestinians. This is part of a pattern.
Last year, the JC discovered that our Deputy Consul General in Jerusalem had led a UK team in a fun run in protest against Israeli “apartheid”. This is not good enough. If we are to take the Prime Minster’s speech at Downing Street last week as a starting-point, it clear that there has to be a proper investigation of what exactly is going on, not just across the civil service but in all public bodies.
We have seen NHS doctors calling for Jew-free zones and Hamas terrorist sympathisers appearing on the BBC as legitimate commentators. We’ve got schools producing letters on this conflict which deny Hamas are even terrorists, others teaching content to children which denies Israel’s right to exist and of course a judge refusing to jail Hamas sympathisers who had himself liked anti-Israel social media content.
That’s before we get into the issue of the Met Police’s decision making about the policing of pro-Palestine marches and their continued passiveness to those spewing hate on our streets and lack of concern over the projecting of a genocidal slogan on to Big Ben.
Both for the sake of Britain’s Jewish community and the country at large, we must root out this pernicious ideology.