Writing in the Jewish Telegraph last week ahead of the Edinburgh Fringe festival, former Conservative minister Andrew Percy MP strongly condemns antisemitism in Scottish anti-Israel movement, stating that “core activists” of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (SPSC) “regularly hide their antisemitism behind advocacy of Palestinian rights”.
The Conservative MP’s remarks follow the recent publication of a damning report which claims that up to 50 percent of activists involved with the SPSC hold antisemitic views.
Mr Percy draws on evidence from the report, authored by David Collier with the support of Jewish Human Rights Watch (JHRW), which makes clear that “40 percent of those who attend the SPSC events deny the Holocaust, blame the Jewish people for 9/11 and even accuse them of controlling ISIS”. He emphasised that we “must acknowledge” these statistics, which prove that “using solidarity with the Palestinian people as a cover, antisemitism has been allowed to fester”.
The MP for Brigg and Goole underlines: “We can no longer assume that Holocaust denial, global Jewish conspiracy theories and a visceral hatred of the Jewish people are past the point of extinction”. He added that “as this report makes uncomfortably clear, they are not”.
“Instead”, Mr Percy argues, “it is up to us to make the case once more for a nation in which everyone is free from persecution and fear”.
Mr Percy writes that in the past, the Edinburgh Fringe festival has been a “hotbed for hatred”, where attendees who have expressed antisemitic views on social media are made welcome. He urges readers to “open our eyes” this year, and “call out hatred and bigotry wherever and whenever we see it”.
He concludes: “Let’s hope David Collier’s report is the last one we ever have to read”. Read the full article here.
Conservative MSP for Eastwood, Jackson Carlaw, described the JHRW report as “well researched and explosive”, adding that “there is much here to cause alarm, with many SPSC members sharing social media posts that are at best considered a naive world view and, at worst, openly antisemitic”.
