LONDON: Member of Scottish Parliament John Mason was expelled on Saturday from the Scottish National Party with immediate effect following a “completely unacceptable” social media post about the ongoing Israeli onslaught on Palestine’s Gaza Strip.
In response to an X comment by former SNP MSP Sandra White criticizing Israel’s conduct in Gaza, Mason denied that the Israeli military’s actions in Gaza amounted to “genocide.”
He wrote: “There is no genocide. If Israel wanted to commit genocide, they would have killed ten times as many.”
If Israel wanted to commit genocide, they would have killed ten times as many.
— John Mason (@JohnMasonMSP) August 16, 2024
White had replied to a post by The Herald saying, “We know what Israelis hope to achieve they are already committing Genocide in Gaza. Talk? You mention Talk whilst innocent children are being massacred.”
We know what Israelis hope to achieve they are already committing Genocide in Gaza Talk you mention Talk whilst innocent children are being massacred .You make me sick John the SNP should disown you as I have
— Sandra White (@SandraWhiteSNP) August 15, 2024
This came after the SNP’s foreign affairs spokesperson in Westminster, Brendan O’Hara, wrote to MSP Angus Robertson voicing his anger over the culture secretary’s meeting with Israel’s Deputy Ambassador to the UK Daniela Grudsky Ekstein.
Mason then revealed that he had also met with the Israeli diplomat.
Mason said he was “disappointed” by his suspension, but a spokesperson for the SNP Chief Whip responded: “To flippantly dismiss the death of more than 40,000 Palestinians is completely unacceptable.
“There can be no room in the SNP for this kind of intolerance.”
The Scottish party’s spokesperson added that the SNP Group would meet to discuss stripping Mason of the whip, with a recommendation of a fixed-period suspension for his “utterly abhorrent comment.”
On Oct. 7, the Israeli military launched a wide-scale operation in the Gaza Strip, annihilating entire cities in the besieged enclave, killing at least 40,000 people, at least 25,000 of whom were women and children, and displacing more than 90 percent of the population multiple times.
In December, South Africa submitted to the International Court of Justice a case accusing Israel of committing “genocide” against Palestinians in Gaza.
The international monitor Human Rights Watch, alongside other humanitarian and human rights groups, warned that the Israeli government was deliberately starving civilians in Gaza as a tool of war.
