Learn about the history of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, equality and justice by exploring major events in the history of their oppression on this day of the year.
4 March
SCOTS PROSECUTOR DISCUSSES WITH ISRAELI COUNTERPART
On this day in 2015, the Scottish Lord Advocate, the chief public prosecutor in the Scottish legal system, held a meeting with an un-named Israeli Embassy official to discuss ”the Israeli and Scottish prosecutorial systems”. The Israeli prosecutorial system has a 99.7% conviction rate for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. It is not clear what Frank Mulholland hoped to learn from a prosecutorial system that human rights observers have said is designed to terrorise Palestinians. (Information obtained from the Scottish Government by Freedom of Information request.)
المدعي العام الاسكتلندي يتحاور مع الجانب الإسرائيلي
4 مارس
في مثل هذا اليوم من عام 2015 ، عقد اللورد المحامي الاسكتلندي ، المدعي العام الرئيسي في النظام القانوني الاسكتلندي ، اجتماعا مع مسؤول في السفارة الإسرائيلية لم يذكر اسمه لمناقشة "نظامي الادعاء الإسرائيلي والاسكتلندي". يبلغ معدل الإدانة في نظام الادعاء الإسرائيلي 99.7٪ للفلسطينيين في الضفة الغربية المحتلة. ليس من الواضح ما الذي كان فرانك مولهولاند يأمل في تعلمه من نظام الادعاء الذي قال مراقبو حقوق الإنسان إنه مصمم لإرهاب الفلسطينيين
The Scottish Lord Advocate accepted a central tenet of political Zionism
"Just to let you know that the LA has accepted a request from the Embassy of Israel to meet with [REDACTED] on Monday 9th March here in Crown Office. The purpose of the meeting is to discuss Jewish relationships in Scotland so, a very general, broad ranging discussion. There will also be discussion about the Israeli and Scottish prosecutorial systems."
In May 2010 then-First Minister Alex Salmond rightly attacked the idea that Scottish Jews "should be judged or affected by the policies of Israel. The Jewish community is not liable for those policies”. It is therefore troubling that the Lord Advocate has now accepted the Zionist claim that the Israeli State represents in some way Scottish Jews. Having officially endorsed this central tenet of Zionism, the Lord Advocate’s office cannot now offer justice to the victims of Zionism, the Scottish-Palestinian community, nor to political opponents of Zionism".
Supporters of Israel, high-powered lawyers who visited Palestine and spent time examining the legal system used there to process Palestinians, described the system Mulholland met with an Israeli Embassy official to discuss:
"...conviction rates are 99.7 per cent...there is no longer any point in fighting for basic rights...the court system was clearly a figleaf for a system of arbitrary justice where the guilt of the child is beside the point...a system that effectively keeps Palestinian society in a state of constant fear and uncertainty...convictions routinely obtained based upon forced confessions and defendants facing remand without bail pending trial for periods in excess of sentences when pleading guilty. No sane defendant would plead not guilty in this Catch 22 situation...can we complain if we awake one day and Israel has sleepwalked into the status of a pariah country?"
There is no record of then-Lord Advocate, Frank Mulholland, reporting on what he achieved from that discussion with his Israeli colleague.
They must have discussed the dual legal system for Jews and Palestinians that is part of a wider apartheid system:
"Israel administers two legal systems in the West Bank; two systems for permitting housing development in Israel and in the West Bank (yes for Jews and no for Palestinians); two West Bank road systems, swish, new and fast for (Jewish) settlers and potholed, rock-strewn and punctuated by checkpoints for Palestinians. It has run a decades-long campaign to destroy Bedouin homes, rights and culture in the Negev, driving shepherd communities off the land and into horrific crime-ridden “new town” slums. It even has the brand new Nation-State Law, explicitly excluding the 20% of its population who are Palestinian from any right to self-determination, and putting Arabic right back in its second-class place.
Archbishop Tutu (who presumably must be allowed some expertise in the matter), plus many Israeli journalists, human rights campaigners, even former directors of Shin Bet and IDF generals, have all looked at the behaviour of the Israeli state and called it apartheid.
The Scottish-Israeli meeting on judicial cooperation followed an agreement signed six months earlier between the UKand Saudi Arabia. This agreement later sparked protests from the UK Labour Party during a Saudi mass killing of 47 political prisoners in January 2016 and another 81 in March 2022. There is no record of any Parliamentary opposition to the Scottish-Israeli meeting, which took place seven months after Israel's mass killing of over 2,200 Palestinians, including 551 children.
2-minute video on Israel's dual (apartheid) legal systems in the West Bank
(https://youtu.be/kYIaTLL6_d0)