Petitions Committee attack on Israel and its propaganda exhibition

The Scottish Parliament’s Public Petition Committee met on 20^th April to consider the SPSC petition to cancel the propaganda exercise by the Scottish Friends of Israel: The exhibition of “Israel’s Contribution to Medicine, Science and Technology”

 

Watch the committee’s blistering attack on Israel and this propaganda exercise

The relevant section starts at 02:01:06

 

02:07:08

"This is simply not the right time in history for us to be celebrating Israel’s contributions; this is the time when we should be continuing to put the pressure on Israel to behave themselves properly"

 

02:08:30

“many of [Israel’s] developments have actually been to the detriment of people in neighbouring countries”

“The international issue that this parliament has united on is the issue of condemnation of the Israeli state, in terms of the treatment of the Palestinian people”

“What we’re actually doing, it could be argued, is condoning the actions of a state against another state by actually hosting this exhibition”

 

02:13:10

“I was very struck with the petitioner saying, to celebrate Israeli technology at this time, which is what we would be doing, what we will be doing with this display, well personally I wont, but to celebrate Israeli technology at this time is to collude in the routine testing of new weapons on the imprisoned Palestinian people, the dropping of white phosphorous on built-up areas of Gaza, the denial of spare parts to water purification plants designed to cause illness and suffering, and the technological edge that enables Israel to kill over 1,400 people in Gaza at little risk to those carrying this out. That unfortunately, at this moment in time, is what we will be celebrating with this display”

 

“if we’re talking about not taking trade missions to Israel, I think we also have to be looking at not having demonstrations of support for [Israel’s] achievements that at the moment are having a devastating effect on the people of Palestine in this parliament.”

 

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Just prior to this item, the committee discussed a similar petition on the subject of Scottish Government funding of trade missions to Israel through Scottish Development International.

This petition was presented by Asid Khan and can be seen from 01:30:40 on the same video

 

“It won’t do us any harm as a nation to restrict our trading to countries that are not committing human rights atrocities”

 

“We need to be very careful in terms of the types of countries and regimes that we’re actually dealing with. Because there can be real problems in terms of being seen to support regimes and countries that are either oppressing their own people or oppressing a separate state”

01:36:00

“it is unsatisfactory for [members of this parliament] to be seen to normalise relations with Israel”

01:37:10

“I do not want to see us normalise our relationships with a state which has broken hundreds of [UN] resolutions"

 

01:56:30; and 01:57:10

Robin Harper referred to Israel twice as a “rogue state”.