SNP has lost its marbles over Israel genocide claims

Progressives in the SNP have been trying to get rid of John Mason, the MSP for Glasgow Shettleston, for years. Even his name is an affront to some in the party. He isn’t a freemason, of course, but rather a devout Baptist who takes the Bible literally and thinks that men should not have sex with other men, that abortion is wrong and that creationism should be taught in schools along with evolution. These are not attitudes that give your standard-issue nationalist the warm and fuzzies.
Mason has now had the whip withdrawn for committing a sin far more egregious than merely opposing a woman’s right to choose or condemning same-sex marriage. Mason declined to accuse the Israeli government of genocide in Gaza. “I personally do not believe that Israel has tried to commit, has committed, or is committing genocide,” he said. SNP X went into meltdown as only it can.
“You glorify killing and murder with your obtuse comment,” erupted Ian Blackford, the former SNP Westminster leader. “You make me sick!” added Sandra White, the former MSP for Glasgow Kelvin, pithily. However, it is not just Mason who is in the dock for being soft on Israel.
The row over genocide has now engulfed Angus Robertson, the SNP external affairs minister, who recently had a meeting with the deputy Israeli ambassador, Daniela Grudsky. He insists this was merely to call for an immediate ceasefire, but Alex Neil, a former SNP minister, has called for Robertson to be sacked. Moreover, John Swinney authorised Robertson’s meeting and so is also now implicated in the very offence which caused Mason’s defenestration: tacitly condoning genocide.
“To flippantly dismiss the death of more than 40,000 Palestinians is completely unacceptable,” a spokesman for the chief whip said when expelling Mason for genocide denial. “There can be no room in the SNP for this kind of intolerance.” Really?
In fact, Mason did not “flippantly dismiss” the death of Palestinians. In a Facebook statement he acknowledged that “far too many had died” and that “many people feel that Israel has moved from a position of self-defence to seeking revenge”. You don’t have to accuse Israel of genocide to be appalled by the scale of the civilian casualties.
This happens to be the view of the United Nations and the International Criminal Court. Saying the occupation of Palestinian territory in the West Bank is unlawful is not the same.
For its part, the International Court of Justice has so far only urged the Israeli government to take measures “to prevent genocidal acts” and allow more humanitarian aid into the province. United Nations commissioners have been highly critical of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, condemning “apparent breaches of international law” and “potentially genocidal acts”. But that falls far short of accusing Israel of genocide.
Genocide means the deliberate, systematic elimination of an entire race. The term was coined by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish lawyer, in 1944 and first used by prosecutors at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders. Their Final Solution was an exercise in “racial purification” conducted with brutal efficiency after the Wannsee conference of Nazi leaders in 1942. It involved the identification, transportation and extermination of six million Jews on the basis of their perceived race. That is genocide.
Israel is not seeking the elimination of the Palestinians as a race, or if it is, it’s going a very odd way about it. The Israeli Defence Force invariably gives warnings to civilians to remove themselves from areas targeted for bombing or terrorist seizures. These warnings may be insufficient and humanitarian aid too meagre, but this does not measure up to a Final Solution in Gaza, even if you accept the Hamas claim that 40,000 have died.
It is arguably Hamas terrorists who seek the elimination of Jews “from the river to the sea”. It would anyway be extraordinary for the UN or anyone else to accuse Jews, who have been the greatest victims of actual genocide in the last century, to be guilty of perpetrating it.
Indeed, accusing Israel of genocide is now classed as “antisemitism” by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). Nicola Sturgeon signed Scotland up to the IHRA in 2017. The Scottish government has accepted that it is antisemitic to “draw comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis”. In other words, to accuse Israel of genocide.
I suspect that Robertson, the SNP external affairs secretary, was fully aware of this when he agreed to hold talks with the Israeli diplomat last week. Grudsky also met Mason shortly afterwards. Robertson is now being accused, like Mason, of “bringing the party into disrepute”.
Brendan O’Hara, the SNP’s Westminster Middle East spokesman, said that Robertson has “lent legitimacy” to Binyamin Netanyahu. “In the midst of a genocide [that] is unconscionable,” Lorna Finn, the SNP national secretary, tweeted after a motion from the Dalkeith branch calling for Robertson to be suspended pending an investigation.
That investigation will find it was Swinney himself who endorsed the meeting “to outline our long-standing position on an immediate ceasefire”. By recognising the Israeli deputy ambassador, Bute House is tacitly accepting that Israel is not guilty of genocide, since the Scottish government does not hold “constructive” talks with genocidal regimes. This surely means that Mason is no more guilty of condoning genocide than Swinney himself. Or could we now see Robertson and the first minister expelled?
Once again the SNP is demonstrating a rather conspicuous absence of marbles over an issue with little relevance to Scottish independence or the cost of living crisis. The SNP conference next month was always going to be a fraught affair given the SNP’s disastrous general election. Now, with this extraordinary outbreak of lacerating self-criticism, they might be better advised to cancel the whole thing.