PROTESTERS who climbed onto the Scottish Parliament have accused the Government of being "complicit" in Gaza's suffering.
Five protesters scaled Holyrood on Thursday morning, dropping a banner that read: “Scotland: Stop Arming Israel”.
Several other members of the group, meanwhile, handed out flyers to those entering and leaving the Scottish Parliament building, saying: “What good are humanitarian appeals when Scotland makes the bombs?”
UK Government statistics, compiled by Campaign Against Arms Trade, show that in the last 10 years the UK has licensed at least £486 million worth of arms to Israel.
The Ferret reported in 2021 that arms firms in Scotland who sell weapons and/or weapons components to Israel received nearly £10m in grants from Scottish Enterprise, the Scottish Government’s business agency.
Recipients included Italian arms giant Leonardo MW, which employs around 1800 people in Edinburgh. Raytheon, which employs over 600 people in Fife, also received money.
A spokesperson for the group told The National that this makes the Scottish Government “complicit” – adding that a lot of people won’t know or want public money to be spent in that way.
They added: “Then there’s the hypocrisy of the Scottish Government also calling for a ceasefire, which is all well and good, but it's the bare minimum, and we need to put our money where our mouth is.”
The Scottish Government, meanwhile, have said that funding is primarily for “helping firms to diversify” and that “safeguards” are in place.
The protest came after Workers in Palestine – a group of Palestinian Trade Unions and activists – announced two days of action on November 9 and 10 to put “direct pressure on governments and companies profiting from the arms trade with Israel”.
Jac, one of the protesters who scaled Holyrood, told The National that the Scottish Government could be doing much more.
“They have already made more promising statements than the UK Government but that’s exactly why we need to keep up the pressure to get them to actually take action as well as make statements.”
First Minister Humza Yousaf has repeatedly called on every political leader in the UK to back a ceasefire in Gaza, with Labour leader Keir Starmer and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak both refusing to do so thus far.
While the SNP leader has said that Israel has a right to defend itself following the Hamas attacks on October 7, he added that action must be taken now to stop the “staggering humanitarian disaster” in Gaza before it becomes “cataclysmic”.
Jac added that the situation in Gaza didn’t “come out of the blue” and that you don’t have to look hard to see the involvement of the British state in past conflicts in the Middle East.
“Scotland played a huge part in Empire and in British colonialism. If we are having conversation about being an independent country, we have to ask ourselves what kind of country we want to be and take a long, hard look at that history.”
The five members of the group, including Jac, who scaled up part of the Scottish Parliament building have since been arrested.
A month of relentless bombardment in Gaza since the Hamas attack has killed more than 10,500 Palestinians – two-thirds of them women and minors, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory.
More than 2300 are believed to have been buried by strikes that in some cases have demolished entire city blocks.
A Scottish Government spokesperson said: “The Scottish Government and our enterprise and skills agencies do not provide funding for the manufacture of munitions. Support for defence sector companies is primarily focused on helping firms to diversify their activities and technologies, ensuring Scotland continues to benefit from significant economic returns and thousands of jobs in the sector.
“Our enterprise agencies have appropriate safeguards in place to ensure that any funding provided is used only for the specific purpose intended and that human rights due diligence checks are central to the application process.”
