Conspiracy theories about SNP’s motion must be challenged
THE Daily Mail has lost its mojo of late. In the Nicola Sturgeon era its front-page headlines were a regular source of amusement. So crude were its vilifications of the former FM, particularly during the Covid inquiry, they were hard to take seriously. Since then, though the Mail tries its best, the non-stop hatred of the SNP seems to lack its old fervour.
However, at least with the Mail you knew where it stood. Not so with The Guardian, a paper that prides itself on fair and balanced journalism but, on closer examination, can be just as prejudiced as the rest of them. Ask Jeremy Corbyn, so often the butt of its columnists – making the Guardian’s shock-horror at the three PMs we got instead of him ring a tad hollow.
It’s the same with the SNP. Last week, The Guardian declared that their Gaza motion was little more than a cynical manoeuvre to sow division in the Labour Party. On February 21 one of its top columnists, John Crace, referred to “an opposition day debate designed to highlight splits in the Labour Party”. On February 22 he wrote: “The Scottish National Party had chosen the Gaza motion as much to embarrass the Labour Party as anything else. It wasn’t as if the result of the vote would make a blind bit of difference to Israel or Hamas.”
Yet I doubt if Humza Yousaf had the Labour Party in mind when, on October 11, he warned against the “collective punishment” of two million people or when, on January 5, he described Israel’s actions as tantamount to “ethnic cleansing”. It follows that the SNP motion, which repeated Humza’s concerns about “collective punishment”, was keeping to a long-held position, irrespective of the Labour Party. Stephen Flynn was following in Humza’s footsteps.
I imagine The Guardian would have received a fair number of letters critical of Mr Crace’s insinuations. Yet on February 24, of seven letters published on the Speaker’s shameful ruling, two wholeheartedly praised his columns and one specifically repeated the allegation that the Gaza motion was primarily about making trouble for Labour. None of the seven took the SNP’s part.
In accusing the SNP of politicking on Gaza, such people, journalists included, subscribe to conspiracy theory; the sort of thing you expect from right-wing tabloids but not from the kind of rigorous, highminded newspaper The Guardian so evidently, and mistakenly, takes itself for.
Alastair McLeish Edinburgh
AS the months pass by since the start of Israel’s so-called “right of defence” after the deadly Hamas attack of October 7, one can only watch in sheer astonishment at the brazen way in which the Netanyahu-led government continues to terrorise the traumatised Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank. Add to that Netanyahu’s recent shameless announcement that more illegal settlements will be built in the terrorised West Bank! Such utter contempt from a horrible populist who shouldn’t be anywhere near the PM position that he occupies.
This is effectively state terror/ genocide in full view and it is still being shamelessly allowed to prevail by Western governments, including Israel’s complicit US and UK allies who have definitely been heavily influenced by Israeli perpetrators/propagandists using all kinds of techniques to force their agenda on government and media influencers.
I believe there should be a full formal investigation into the extent of said political pressure on a sitting British government that has become an embarrassment to the population that it supposedly serves and is at odds with the unified stance of the devolved governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland supporting an immediate ceasefire and a formal condemnation of the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.
The recent slaughter/murder (a regular atrocity by Israeli soldiers) of innocent, hungry people looking for food is unforgivable and another war crime to add to the huge list of crimes against humanity that the Israeli PM and his fascist cohorts are guilty of committing. They impudently lie to justify this slaughter as it becomes apparent from video evidence and witness