The Times on Thursday, June 13th, published excerpts of a video from webinars from 2023 attended by hundreds of British civil servants that features discussion of how to change UK government policy on Israel and that contains antisemitic tropes. The webinars were held by the Civil Service Muslim Network (CSMN) and led by a civil servant named Sami Rahman.
A memo of the meetings was handed to The Times earlier, and the paper reported some of its contents. The memo had been compiled by civil servants who “were increasingly worried about antisemitic remarks and the conduct of people in the CSMN over efforts to make government policy harder towards Israel after the Hamas terrorist attack of October 7, 2023,” the outlet wrote on Thursday.
An investigation was launched as a result, however, investigators had been unable to “identify any areas and/or individuals where further investigations may be required” or “any specific wider general learning,” according to Hyphen, a British, Muslim news website which obtained their conclusions through a freedom of information request.
But on Thursday the UK government reopened its investigation of Rahman’s comments and the group in light of the video in which Rahman is seen and heard telling the group in December 2023 that the war in Gaza is a “fight between good and evil,” and describing Israel as “the Shaitan” (the devil). and citing anti-Zionist documentaries to make the point that Israel has „insidious influence” over the UK. Rahman also suggested Zionism is “ethnic cleansing of anyone who is not Jewish.”
