Scottish parliamentarian John Mason has been expelled from the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) after claiming that there had been “no genocide” in Gaza.
In an X post in August, the Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for Glasgow Shettleston said:
“If Israel wanted to commit genocide, they would have killed ten times as many.”
Speaking to BBC Radio’s Good Morning Scotland following his expulsion, Mason doubled down on his comments, calling it “disappointing” that he was expelled “over the definition of a word”.
He added that the SNP should be a “big tent”.
Mason’s claim was in response to former SNP MSP Sandra White, who had posted that Israel “are already committing genocide in Gaza”.
In March, a United Nations Special Rapporteur said there were “reasonable grounds” to believe that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza – a claim Israel “utterly rejects”.
As of 1 October, the Palestinian Health Ministry reported that over 41,500 people have been killed in Gaza since the 7 October attacks in Israel.
Mason initially suspended for seven weeks pending a ruling by the SNP’s Member Conduct Committee.
In correspondence shared by Mason on Facebook, the committed wrote:
“Your continued insistence that you were the arbiter of what is considered to be genocide was felt by the committee to be unacceptable and offensive and was likely to damage the party.”
Ruby, a student who has previously voted for the SNP, told The Student:
“It’s unacceptable not to recognise the atrocities occurring in Gaza and it’s very reassuring to see that the SNP are one of the few parties that are sympathetic to Palestinians.”
“Scottish Parliament – 49188771378” by Jorge Franganillo is licensed under CC BY 2.0.