Scottish Friends of Palestine أصدقاء فلسطين الأسكتلنديين

Press Release 7 March 2008

Scottish Friends of Palestine welcomes the joint statement from the major UK charities with regard to the grave humanitarian crisis unfolding in the Gaza Strip.

We have to ask why it is that only the charities express their concern. Where is the condemnation from the government and major political parties? Not one single word of condemnation has been uttered. Not one single word of sympathy to the victims and the bereaved.

We also reflect upon the recent revelations with regard to funding of the major political parties where supporters of the state of Israel have been shown to feature – in particular the supporters of Labour and Conservative Friends of Israel. We call upon the responsible media to investigate any connections between Zionist sources of funding and the policies, or absence of policies, pursued by the major parties in relation to Israeli violence and aggression against the Palestinian people, to a military occupation now in its fifth decade.

Scottish Friends of Palestine condemns the presence of the supporters of the JNF Charitable Trust in Glasgow this coming Saturday. That such supporters of the Israeli state, its policies and practices, should dine out in Glasgow while the same state murders and starves the Palestinian civilian population in the Gaza Strip is nothing short of a gross obscenity.

Scottish Friends of Palestine deplores the recent visit of the UK Israeli ambassador to the Scottish Parliament. It was an underhand arrangement which does not reflect well on democracy and government in Scotland. No Scottish government should host the representative of an apartheid state which has brutally and violently repressed a people for over 40 years. That it took place at a time when the army of the state was slaughtering children and other innocent civilians defies all logic.

Scottish Friends of Palestine is a firm advocate of the total boycott of all Israeli institutions, academic and cultural bodies and Israeli products – until as such times that the Israeli state ceases to boycott the rights of the Palestinian people, and international law as it pertains to the Palestinian people.