A Foreign Office adviser leading the fight against female genital mutilation (FGM) signed a petition dismissing reports of rape committed by Hamas on October 7 as “propaganda” to justify Israel’s “genocide” against Palestinians, the JC can reveal.
Dimpy Sanganee works in the Foreign Office’s Gender and Equalities department and has an “instrumental” role in tackling violence against women and girls. Earlier this month, she signed a petition that wrongly alleged that a major New York Times article revealing the full horror of sexual violence on October 7 cited “no evidence”.
Sir William Shawcross, the reviewer of UK’s counter-terror strategy, told the JC that the government must conduct an urgent investigation into Sanganee’s appointment. After she was approached by the JC, Sanganee’s name disappeared from the petition, which subsequently vanished from the Change.org website.
The petition, posted online earlier this month by SpeakUp, an Egyptian feminist group, claims the article amounted to “exploitation of women’s bodies and struggles as a means to fabricate assault incidents and push propaganda for an unlawful occupation, thereby abetting the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people”.
In a sign of conspiratorial thinking, even if women were raped on October 7, the petition said, there was “no evidence to support the occupation’s allegations” that they were committed by Hamas. “All we have is the confirmed history of the Israeli army’s involvement in gender-based violence towards women, both Israelis and Palestinians,” it said.
In fact, examination of rape victims’ bodies have revealed evidence of horrific injuries caused by sexual violence, and captured Hamas terrorists have admitted under interrogation that they committed rape. Documents containing instructions on how to commit rape, including the Hebrew for phrases such as “take off your pants” and “open your legs”, were found on the bodies of Hamas terrorists.
One of Sanganee’s colleagues said that the adviser’s role at the Foreign Office meant she was “instrumental in tackling violence against women and girls” and could even be writing policy on the government’s response to sexual violence on October 7. “The role she’s in has a real impact,” she told the JC. “I’m horrified.”
In an interview with the JC last week, Israel’s First Lady, Michal Herzog, said that attempts by women’s and human rights groups to minimise the sexual violence were a “painful betrayal of women”.
It comes amid allegations of a culture of “indoctrination” against Israel and stereotyping of Jews within the Foreign Office. Former government intelligence analyst Anna Stanley, whose article about civil service training in Fathom journal went viral last week, told the JC that she often heard Foreign Office colleagues voicing “anti-Israel sentiment” after October 7. Many saw the Jewish state as “colonialist, apartheid and evil”, she said.
Stanley added her former colleagues tended to see Jews through the lens of identity politics — as “privileged whites” — and civil servants often justified the October 7 attacks by citing the “Israeli occupation”.
“Posts about Israel on the intranet were filled with negative comments,” Stanley told the JC. “October 7 was contextualised with discussion of ‘Israeli occupations’, so that it seemed that some saw the attacks as in essence justified.
“I heard things said such as ‘Gaza is an open-air prison’ and tirades against Netanyahu’s government, with claims it was ‘fascist’ and perpetrating awful human rights abuses.”
Overall, she said, “there was little no acknowledgement of the impact October 7 had on Jews, and resistance to acknowledging its magnitude. Internal emails rarely discussed antisemitism. There were plans for a whole month of Islamophobia training and only a day of antisemitism training”.
In her article last week, Stanley described how she had attended a civil service course at King’s College London (KCL) which suggested that Islamist extremism had been exaggerated, and that using the label was “terrorist” was problematic because it “implied a moral judgment.”
Participants were told that Hamas could be seen as “freedom fighters” and that “condemning terrorism is to endorse the power of the strong over the weak,” she wrote.
The course also suggested that the government’s Prevent counter-extremism strategy was “Islamophobic”.
The claims prompted concern at the highest level of government, with Security Minister Tom Tugendhat ordering a review of the KCL programme and similar courses.
Sir William told the JC: “My review (of Prevent) repeated calmly and clearly what is well known, that in the UK, the lethal threat from Islamist terrorists is far greater than that from extreme right-wingers. The body count of innocent people murdered by Islamist terrorists shows that very clearly.
“My review also showed that there is widespread reluctance to recognise this obvious fact, including amongst officials, often for fear of being accused of ‘Islamophobia’. It appears from Stanley’s account that Kings College is infected with this same deadly myopia. The College should mount a full investigation into attitudes amongst its staff.
“Anna Stanley’s description is shocking and deeply concerning. She quoted a senior Kings College academic calling for the ‘suppression’ of the work of Douglas Murray one of the bravest journalists covering the horrors of the Hamas pogrom of October 7th, and of the inevitable Israeli response. King’s should at once mount an enquiry into this very serious allegation. No academic should be calling for a British journalist to be ‘suppressed’.”
A government source told the JC: “We’re concerned by these allegations. It’s important to ensure that training for civil servants, particularly those with roles in national security, continues to be rigorous and robust.”
Former prime minister Liz Truss is also “deeply concerned” by the claims, the JC understands, following her own experience of having to “overrule” Foreign Office officials who objected to her support for Israel while she was foreign secretary.
She regularly struggled with mandarins over Britain’s membership of bodies like the UN Human Rights Council, which had been “used to peddle a particular agenda, which frankly has strong elements of antisemitism”, a source close to Truss said.
At the KCL course, Stanley wrote, one attendee remarked that her brother had been radicalised to fight in Syria for Islamic State. Nonetheless, she claimed that Prevent was “inherently racist” because it focused on Islamist extremism, and attacked Sir William, whose Prevent review found that officials were fearful of referring potential Islamist extremists for fear of being called Islamophobic.
Stanley claimed that the KCL course suggested that Islamist extremism had been exaggerated, and that using the label was “terrorist” was problematic because it “implied a moral judgment.”
She wrote: “Israel was referenced throughout the course. We were told some consider Hamas terrorists as freedom fighters whereas Israel was provided as a prime example when considering the question of whether a state can commit terrorism. Israel is seen as a powerful aggressor and the Palestinians militarily disadvantaged… this fuels the view that Israel is a terrorist state and Hamas’ atrocities are justifiably ‘contextualised’.”
She added that a lecturer had argued the writer Douglas Murray and US broadcaster Joe Rogan were “far-right”, asking: “To what extent should Joe Rogan and Douglas Murray be suppressed?” The lecturer went on to say: “Society needs to find other ways to suppress them.”
Murray, who has called the remarks about himself and Rogan “deeply sinister” and “defamatory”, told the JC that there was an “institutional problem” with the civil service “and it’s high time ministers got a grip on it”. His lawyers had written to KCL demanding an investigation, he added.
A KCL spokesman said: “This private, invite-only course for civil servants was delivered on behalf of the FCDO and as with all our courses, attendees were taught by eminent experts using impartial and evidence-based resources in an environment where different theories, concepts and questions are shared to prompt discussion”.
A Foreign Office spokesman said: “The Issues in Countering Terrorism course at KCL offers those working on counter terrorism within HMG a comprehensive introduction to Counter Terrorism trends, analysis, academic insight and space for discussion and debate. We have a zero-tolerance approach to antisemitism. Allegations of discrimination of any kind are taken very seriously and will be fully investigated. The UK Government remains resolute in its support of Israel after the worst terrorist attack in its history.”
With respect to Sanganee, the spokesperson added: “Allegations of staff misconduct are taken very seriously and will be fully investigated. The UK condemns sexual violence unequivocally and without exception and stands in solidarity with all of the victims and survivors.”
Sanganee did not reply to requests for comment.
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