Last night, the final night of Passover, a subscriber update from The National, Scotlands pro-independence newspaper, landed in my inbox. Of the five top stories it promoted, three were dedicated to attacking Israel, each dripping with blood libel, Holocaust inversion, and demonizing language calculated to inflame emotions and manufacture outrage. But this has nothing to do with Palestinian rights. This is about next year’s Scottish Elections.

In the UK, Newspapers are not governed by the same rules as broadcasters are. Political bias in print is nothing new, in fact it’s expected. The National makes no secret of its pro-independence stance, and that’s well within its rights. But at what point does open bias become sinister? At what point does journalistic integrity step in? Is openly misleading your readers in order to drive their emotions still journalism? And is there any ethical or moral line that should prevent the exploitation of the suffering of Palestinian people for domestic politics? 

Because make no mistake, this isn’t about Palestine. It’s about power.

The pro-Palestinian PR machine has has spent two decades expertly aligning itself with other causes. In Scotland, this has manifested as the painting of the narrative onto Scottish nationalism and the fight for independence. In this analogy, the Palestinians are the Scots, and Israel is the English. The fact that this is entirely backwards, and that actually the establishment of Israel decolonized the land from 1300 years of imperial caliphate rule and struck a decisive blow against the British Empire no longer matters, the idea has sunk in, and the emotions are strong. 

The rage against English rule here is real. Rule from “Westmonster” is considered imperial oppression, and those that subscribe to this view genuinely feel the pain of their ancestors, those dispossessed in the Highland Clearances, starved, slaughtered, transported as indentured slaves to America and Australia, their culture outlawed and their language brutally suppressed. These people believe that their own pain is mirrored in Palestinian suffering, and unable to launch armed attacks against the British army, they exorcise their........

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