EXCLUSIVE<\/span><\/p>\n Head of defence college asked military official to ensure the government took ownership of the ban, emails reveal.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The United Kingdom\u2019s decision to ban Israelis from a top military college over Israel\u2019s genocidal war on Gaza prompted concern about the college\u2019s reputation internally, with its leadership seeking to distance the institution from the decision, emails from the college, which have been obtained by Al Jazeera, reveal.<\/p>\n The Ministry of Defence (MOD) announced the ban on Israelis attending the Royal College of Defence Studies (RCDS) in September last year after Israel unveiled plans to launch a major ground assault on Gaza City.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n The British government made the decision, which was widely reported in international media, amid a wave of condemnation of Israel\u2019s escalation of the war, calling the planned ground offensive \u201cwrong\u201d.<\/p>\n Previously unreported correspondence shows that the move prompted discussion within the RCDS about potential harm to its reputation as an institution which welcomes students of all backgrounds, leading its head to ask a senior military official to ensure that the public would be aware that the college played no role in the decision.<\/p>\n RCDS commandant George Norton asked Tom Copinger-Symes, a British army lieutenant general, for his help in shaping the public narrative while a government minister was preparing to answer a question about the ban in the UK\u2019s upper house of parliament.<\/p>\n In an email sent shortly after the ban was announced, Norton told Copinger-Symes that it would \u201cappear to be important\u201d for Jenny Chapman, the UK\u2019s development minister, to highlight that the college does not invite or select participants in its courses, and that invitations were \u201crather a government-to-government matter\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThese key pieces of information have been absent from\u00a0the majority of\u00a0media portrayal,\u00a0generating a\u00a0perception\u00a0that RCDS itself is deciding which countries to invite or not to\u00a0invite,\u201d Norton, a retired British army officer, wrote.<\/p>\n \u201cI would be grateful for your support in underlining this position in our public narrative,\u00a0without of course creating a\u00a0perception\u00a0that RCDS (or CSOC) is\u00a0seeking\u00a0to undermine\u00a0government policy.\u201d<\/p>\n Copinger-Symes wrote back that he would \u201csee what we can do\u201d and asked a colleague to \u201ccheck that we are able to contribute\u201d to Chapman\u2019s response.<\/p>\n Norton\u2019s request came a day after staff at the college discussed the potential reputational impact amid a flurry of media inquiries and correspondence from the public about the ban.<\/p>\n \u201cI appreciate that while we fall under MOD, we do have a standalone brand and our reputation as a welcoming college that positively wants to engage with all as that diversity and dealing with places we would not always agree with on a topic is exactly what this place is about,\u201d deputy commandant Tamara Jennings wrote in an email to colleagues about how to respond to a media inquiry.<\/p>\n \u201cSo a story which says RCDS have banned anyone is unhelpful, both in terms of attribution of the decision and the term \u2018ban\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n Al Jazeera obtained the emails via a Freedom of Information request.<\/p>\n In response to questions from Al Jazeera about this, an MOD spokesperson said decisions about military education and training are made by the government on a \u201ccase-by-case basis\u201d and following \u201crobust assessment as to the benefits and the risks\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cWe keep foreign attendance on UK military education courses under constant review,\u201d the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n The RCDS did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n While the UK is traditionally a close ally of Israel, the countries\u2019 ties have been strained by Israel\u2019s genocidal war on Gaza.<\/p>\n More than 72,000 Palestinians \u2013 the majority women and children \u2013 have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its genocidal war on the enclave following the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks on villages and army outposts in southern Israel, according to Gaza\u2019s health authorities.<\/p>\n These figures have been accepted by the Israeli authorities as correct; however, many thousands more are missing and believed to be dead and lying under the rubble.<\/p>\n Fewer than five Israeli military personnel are currently enrolled in military-related academic courses in the UK, according to British government officials.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n EXCLUSIVE Head of defence college asked military official to ensure the government took ownership of the ban, emails reveal. The United Kingdom\u2019s decision to ban Israelis from a top military college over Israel\u2019s genocidal war on Gaza prompted concern about the college\u2019s reputation internally, with its leadership seeking to distance the institution from the decision, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18753,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18752\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
![\"Gaza](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/AFP__20250925__76PF766__v1__MidRes__PalestinianIsraelConflict-1775802593.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513&quality=80\")
![\"RDSC\"](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/royaldefencecollege-1775803672.jpg?w=628&resize=628%2C882&quality=80\")
In her answers to questions about the ban in the House of Lords, Chapman explained the government\u2019s rationale for the decision, but did not specifically state that the college had no role in selecting participants for courses, according to the House of Lords Hansard, the publicly available daily transcript of debates and discussions in the chamber.<\/p>\n
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