{"id":116722,"date":"2024-08-18T17:11:15","date_gmt":"2024-08-18T17:11:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/08\/18\/british-foreign-office-diplomat-mark-smith-resigns-over-israel-arms-sales\/"},"modified":"2024-08-18T17:11:15","modified_gmt":"2024-08-18T17:11:15","slug":"british-foreign-office-diplomat-mark-smith-resigns-over-israel-arms-sales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/08\/18\/british-foreign-office-diplomat-mark-smith-resigns-over-israel-arms-sales\/","title":{"rendered":"British Foreign Office diplomat Mark Smith resigns over Israel arms sales"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A British Foreign Office official who worked on counter terrorism has resigned in protest at arms sales to Israel, saying the UK government \u201cmay be complicit in war crimes\u201d.<\/p>\n

Mark Smith wrote to colleagues on Friday, saying he had raised concerns \u201cat every level\u201d in the Foreign Office, including through an official whistle blowing mechanism.<\/p>\n

Mr Smith, who was based at the British Embassy in Dublin, added he had received nothing more than basic acknowledgments.<\/p>\n

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) declined to comment on an individual case but said the government was committed to upholding international law.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The resignation email, which has been seen by the BBC, was sent to a wide set of distribution lists including hundreds of government officials, embassy staff and special advisors to Foreign Office ministers.<\/p>\n

Mr Smith said he had previously worked in Middle East arms export licensing assessment for the government and \u201ceach day\u201d colleagues were witnessing \u201cclear and unquestionable examples\u201d of war crimes and breaches of international humanitarian law by Israel in Gaza.<\/p>\n

\u201cSenior members of the Israeli government and military have expressed open genocidal intent, Israeli soldiers take videos deliberately burning, destroying and looting civilian property,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhole streets and universities have been demolished, humanitarian aid is being blocked and civilians are regularly left with no safe quarter to flee to. Red Crescent ambulances have been attacked, schools and hospitals are regularly targeted. These are War Crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said there was \u201cno justification for the UK’s continued arms sales to Israel\u201d.<\/p>\n

The FCDO said Foreign Secretary David Lammy had initiated a review \u201con day one in office\u201d to assess whether Israel was complying with international humanitarian law.<\/p>\n

While hundreds of officials in the UK, Europe and the US have registered unprecedented levels of dissent<\/a> at their governments\u2019 policies towards Israel over the war in Gaza, there have been far fewer known cases of so-called principled resignations, meaning Mr Smith\u2019s case is extremely rare for the British government.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Foreign Secretary David Lammy has initiated a review to assess whether Israel was complying with international law<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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According to the email, his role was \u201cSecond Secretary Counter Terrorism\u201d – understood to be a relatively junior rank, but one in which he described himself as \u201ca subject matter expert in the domain of arms sales policy\u201d after \u201ca long career in the diplomatic service\u201d.<\/p>\n

His email continued: \u201cMinisters claim that the UK has one of the most \u2018robust and transparent\u2019 arms export licensing regimes in the world, however this is the opposite of the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a fully cleared officer raising serious concerns of illegality in this Department, to be disregarded in this way is deeply troubling. It is my duty as a public servant to raise this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since 2008, the UK has granted licenses for weapons exports to Israel worth \u00a3574m ($727m) in total, according to the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT). <\/p>\n

The UK government has recently played down the scale of the supply, calling it “relatively small” at \u00a342m ($53m) in 2022.<\/p>\n

Israel has repeatedly denied breaching international humanitarian law in Gaza.<\/p>\n

Responding to previous cases of dissent by Western officials over policy and arms supply, Israel\u2019s government has said it is acting to defeat Hamas as \u201ca genocidal terrorist organisation which commits war crimes as well as crimes against humanity”.<\/p>\n

In May, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) applied for arrest warrants for Israel\u2019s prime minister and defence minister, as well as for leaders of Hamas, for war crimes, but these have yet to be issued.<\/p>\n

An FCDO spokesperson said: \u201cThis government is committed to upholding international law. We have made clear that we will not export items if they might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violations of International Humanitarian Law.\u201d<\/p>\n

The spokesperson added: \u201cThere is an ongoing review process to assess whether Israel is complying with International Humanitarian Law, which the Foreign Secretary initiated on day one in office. We will provide an update as soon as that review process has been completed.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n


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Reuters A British Foreign Office official who worked on counter terrorism has resigned in protest at arms sales to Israel, saying the UK government \u201cmay be complicit in war crimes\u201d. Mark Smith wrote to colleagues on Friday, saying he had raised concerns \u201cat every level\u201d in the Foreign Office, including through an official whistle blowing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":116723,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/bbcx\/grey-placeholder.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[603],"tags":[13848,14,8942,33,38,73,1951,6952,2022,8347],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116722"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116722"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116722\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":116724,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116722\/revisions\/116724"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}