There's nothing cuddly about the Scottish Greens
As 200 Jews are murdered in Israel by Hamas, the Scottish Greens refuse to call them terrorists and Ross Greer MSP defends their right to attack their "occupiers"
Edit: Since this article was written the death toll from Hamas terrorism has risen from 200 to 600 and may well rise higher.
The Scottish Greens are usually considered the slightly eccentric socks and sandals wearing cousin of Scottish politics. A basket for protest voters, ecologically minded left-wingers and youthful students eager to compel a rework of societal hierarchies. Yet few issues expose the fallacy of believing them to be the cuddly party of devolved politics as readily as their record on the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
Policy Motion 2
Few noticed back in 2015 when the Scottish Greens decided that Jeremy Corbyn must have felt lonely out there on his limb.
On a Saturday in 2015 the Scottish Greens echoed Mr Corbyn in his support for Hamas, formally passing a motion to delist Hamas as a terrorist organisation. Apparently to the cuddly party of Scottish politics, Hamas shouldn’t be regarded as a proscribed organisation.
In ‘Policy Motion 2’ (which they have never rescinded as a party) the Greens demonstrate just how incendiary they really are.
They remove Hamas from the list of proscribed terrorist organisations:
“11.4.6.4.2: We call for the removal of Hamas from the designation as a terrorist organization”1
Not content with just that, they adopt language revealing just how partisan their view of the history of the conflict is, for example brandishing the founding of the Jewish homeland as ‘the Nakba’, the Arabic term for ‘catastrophe’.2
This is accompanied by demands for a full boycott of (and divestment from) the world’s only ethnically Jewish state and a refusal to recognise Israel as a Jewish state.
“11.4.6.5.1 The Scottish Green Party will support the Palestinians' call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel,”3
“11.4.6.3.1. The Scottish Green Party condemns Israel's claim to be 'the Jewish State' and the giving of preferential rights to Jews over Palestinians;”4
The Scottish Greens to this day refuse to recognise Hamas as a terrorist organisation, demand Israel ceases to be a Jewish state, backs a full boycott of it and finds time to denounce Zionism as a “coloniser” ideology. So Hamas are okay but democratically elected politicians subscribing to Zionism aren’t?
And for the avoidance of doubt, Zionism is the backing for the re-establishment of a Jewish nation in the geographical location of the homeland of the Jewish people. The Scottish Greens can’t abide that, but apparently can abide Hamas.
A politics of hate
As if to underscore the hostility this 2015 (and still unrepealed) motion 2 has for Jewish people, the Scottish Greens held the vote on a Saturday. That detail matters since it means any practicing Jew was excluded from participating altogether.
This resolution, which effectively excluded Jewish members from participating also insisted that the security barrier built by Israel to stop Palestinian suicide bombers “constitutes the most visible implementation of the segregation of Palestinians into controlled areas, which constitutes a policy of Apartheid” To the Scottish Green mind, a barrier to stop suicide bombers is bad, Hamas aren’t terrorists, Jews have no right to insist on a state of their own in their own homeland.
Oh, and all those Hamas terrorists who are in jail for trying to use violence to murder Jewish people? They should all be released…
“11.4.6.4.3 We call on the unconditional release of all Palestinian political prisoners from Israeli jails”5
Depressingly the passage of time has changed absolutely none of the thinking inside the Scottish Greens. Just today their MSP Ross Greer decided it was a smart idea to tweet "Palestinians have a clear right under international law to defend themselves, including by attacking their occupiers":
He typed that out as his considered response to a day when 200 Jews have been murdered by Hamas terrorists, 1000 more injured and potentially kidnappees in the triple digits…"Palestinians have a clear right under international law to defend themselves, including by attacking their occupiers". The moral depravity is incredible, but for those of us fully aware of the Scottish Greens and their blurring of the lines between mere anti-Zionism and outright anti-Jewish hatred aren’t surprised.
Hamas is committed by its charter to the “obliteration” of the State of Israel and to “struggle against the Jews… until the enemy is vanquished and Allah’s victory is realised”. To politicians such as Ross Greer they aren’t terrorists, and they have a right to attack “their occupiers”6.
Even Jeremy Corbyn got the memo that buddying up to Hamas and calling them “friends” wasn’t the smartest thing to do, he apologised for that as long ago as 2016. Yet the Scottish Greens retain Policy Motion 2, and Ross Greer insists Palestinians “have a right” to “defend themselves, including by attacking their occupiers” on the day 200 Israeli Jews are murdered.
As someone who was President of the Stirling University Jewish Society far too many moons ago now, the deep upset at the antics of the Greens is profound. But that they consistently sneak under the radar despite this well documented history of what I view as barely ambiguous antisemitism is alarming.
They are in government, ministers impacting on policy, ticking up in the polls…but there is nothing cuddly about the extremism at the heart of their politics.
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Scottish Green Party Second Agenda Motions to be presented to Autumn Conference 10th/11th October 2015, page 5, https://web.archive.org/web/20210821144751/https://gallery.mailchimp.com/086bf7fc9a069dfced2d14c66/files/FINAL_2nd_Agenda_Conference_2015.pdf
ibid, page 2
ibid, page 5
ibid page 4
ibid, page 5
Stephen Daisley: https://stephendaisley.com/2015/10/11/scottish-greens-vote-to-remove-hamas-from-terrorist-list/
Are you really saying that Israels treatment of the Palestinians is beyond reproach? Maybe a more balanced perspective would be more credible?