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The Uncontrollable Loathing of Israel in Sections of the Scottish National Party


(Spectator-UK) Stephen Daisley - The Scottish establishment is worked up after it emerged that Angus Robertson, the Scottish government's pretendy foreign secretary, met with Daniela Grudsky, Israel's deputy ambassador to the UK, on August 8. They discussed fairly routine and low-level matters like cultural cooperation and renewables. But to hear the howls from politicos and activists, you'd think Robertson leapt into a tank and rolled into Gaza. His colleagues have lined up to denounce the meeting, with one even calling for his dismissal. This is for sitting down with a representative of a country which has good diplomatic relations and trading links with the UK. The uncontrollable loathing that Israel inspires in certain sections of the Scottish National Party (SNP) is pitiful but it's also a shame. The late Winnie Ewing, the great matriarch of Scottish nationalism, was a passionate Zionist who holidayed in Israel. Things have changed. Where progressives once used Israel to live out their own political fantasies, with the socialist kibbutzniks cast in the role of romantic revolutionaries, the Jewish state now fulfills the role of universal malefactor, an evil-doer of near-demonic depravity with whose wickedness the enlightened can contrast their own virtue. None of this matters a jot to Israel. They can look after themselves and there are any number of countries keen to buy their life-saving medicines and cutting-edge technology. But it creates the impression that Scotland's political elite are spiteful, closed-minded, irrational and easily led, a miserable assemblage of provincial, low-information haters. We wouldn't want anyone getting that idea.
2024-08-20 00:00:00
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