The Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (SPSC) have taken the unprecedented step of welcoming a statement from a political party on the cause of the Palestinian people.  Mick Napier, SPSC Chair, said in the letter that this was the first time that any political formation in Scotland had oficially expressed their open and unambigious support.

John Wight of Lothians Solidarity welcomed the letter as an example of how Solidarity are building respect in the wider movement:

"This letter shows that the clear positions and solid work that Solidarity have carried out is having an effect and is respected by campaigners for justice."

The letter also caled on other political parties to show the clear commitment that Solidarity had and asked Solidarity to establish links with Palestinian left wing parties. 

Letter to Solidarity


Dear Solidarity


The Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign welcomes the statement from ‘Solidarity’ on the deepening crisis in Palestine. No political formation in Scotland to date has expressed officially, openly and unambiguously its support for the just struggle of the Palestinian people.

The Israeli apartheid state commits unspeakable crimes in alliance with the US and UK: ethnic cleansing, and harsh racist discrimination against all Arabs in every area under its control. A BNP-type, Avigdor Lieberman, sits comfortably as a senior member of the Israeli cabinet.  Since one of its soldiers was captured by Palestinian fighters from the Gaza concentration area, Israel has massacred many hundreds of Palestinian men, women and children in brutal reprisals reminiscent of the worst atrocities of other European colonial occupations. The Israeli state goes so far as to reward soldiers who openly advocate the murder of Palestinian infants.


The British Labour Party called openly during WWII for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. For decades many on the British Left were open admirers of ‘brave little socialist Israel’. Even today the Israeli pseudo-trade union, the Histadrut, which is massively involved in sustaining Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands, with all its resulting oppression and massacre, is invited annually to TUC, STUC and other trade union conferences. How easy it was for Peretz to seamlessly move from his Histadrut chair to the Defence Ministry and the direct supervision of the machine of military occupation.


A misplaced fear of being smeared as ‘anti-Semitic’ seems to be holding some back from their elementary duty of solidarity with a people who struggle against their allotted doom in the US-UK-Israeli plans for the Middle East. We should reject with scorn such accusations from politically-committed Zionists who, as a cursory acquaintance with their history will show, have betrayed Jewish communities time without number in order to work with viciously anti-Semitic regimes and movements. For Zionists, nothing is allowed to impede their nightmare-dream of a Jewish supremacist state in an ethnically-cleansed Palestine. If Zionism is lethal for Palestinians and other Arabs, it is a tragic cul-de-sac for those European Jews who fled Europe, understandably, but then strove to secure their own safety in alliance Britain, and now the US and Europe, by crushing and driving out the native Palestinians.



All of us who stand on the ground of universal human rights will work together against those who do not. Obviously, all those born in Palestine/Israel have a stake and a right to a future there, even though their arrival and prospering there was predicated on the brutal violation of the rights of the native people. (History is cruel everywhere, with numerous examples of ethnic cleansing, including here in Scotland.) The jackboot of the Zionists, however, has to be removed from the neck of the Palestinians before there can be any hope of peace, just as the nightmare of white supremacy was ended in South Africa for the benefit of all. Such a liberation is a liberation for all concerned, but it is unrealistic to expect the mass of Israeli Jews, those who currently benefit from a violently-enforced supremacy over Arabs, to lead such a struggle. Individual whites joined the liberation movement in South Africa, but it fell to the victims of the racist system, the mass of black people to lead the struggle against apartheid. Jews who actively give solidarity to the victims of their own brutal regime are, as many of us have seen in Palestine, welcomed with open arms into Palestinian towns and homes. Ugly Jewish settlers who treat the Palestinians as vermin are welcome, and should be welcome, nowhere on earth.



We call on Scottish political parties, or sections and branches of parties, to openly endorse and campaign for these aims

The withdrawal of the Israeli army from all the Occupied Territories.
An International Commission of Enquiry into Israeli massacres of Palestinian civilians.
The end of Zionist ethnic cleansing, and the right of all refugees to return to their homelands.
The right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.
An end to British arms sales to Israel

The current punishment of Palestinians for their recent democratic vote is intolerable to all decent people. A litmus test of the human rights credentials of all Scottish political parties and individual politicians is the position they adopt towards the crushing of Palestinian democracy. We call upon Solidarity, as a self-proclaimed socialist party, to:

1. establish open and formal links of solidarity and political debate with Palestinian left-wing parties.
2. support the democratic rights of the Palestinian people, in the face of Blair and Bush’s campaign to annul their voice, by inviting the elected representatives of the Palestinian people, currently the Islamic resistance Movement, HAMAS, to speak to meetings across the country and in the Parliament.
3. campaign together with the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign for a boycott of Israel


Mick Napier

Chair, Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign