Charges against pro-Palestinian campaigners dropped

Five members of the Scottish Palestinian Solidarity Campaign (SPSC) have had charges of racially aggravated breach of the peace thrown out by a judge in Edinburgh.

After 18 months of hearings and changes of charges, Sheriff James Scott said there was insufficient evidence to suggest they acted in concert and with malice.

The Procurator Fiscal made initially brought breach of the peace charges but subsequently introduced a new charge claiming that the Israel Boycott Protest had been racially motivated.

The performance by the Jerusalem Quartet held at the Queen’s theatre in 2008 was interrupted on separate occasions to shouts of “they are Israeli army musicians... end genocide in Gaza... boycott Israel”.

After accusations of making “comments about Jews, Israelis, and the State of Israel”, a legal debate took place in which a BBC recording of the event showed that none had mentioned the word Jew.

The charges were dropped by Sheriff Scott, who said human rights legislation would be worthless if people on a public march "designed to protest against a state and its army" were afraid to name the state for fear of being charged with racially aggravated behaviour.

One of the accused, Sofia MacLeod, SPSC Secretary, said: “Given the absurd nature of a charge clearly designed to criminalise the growing campaign to boycott apartheid Israel until it respects Palestinian human rights, rather than oppose the new charges, we welcomed the opportunity to highlight that to boycott Israel is the opposite of racist.” 

Dr Ezra Golombok, director of the Israel Information Office in Scotland suggested that criticising Israel was indeed racist: “That criticism of Israel descends disturbingly close to anti-Semitic stereotype is obvious.”

The honorary president of the SPSC, Marion Woolfson, a local Jewish writer and journalist described the charges as “ridiculous”.

“It would have been absurd to label Peter Hain and Desmond Tutu etc as racist for pushing the successful boycott of apartheid South Africa; clearly they were anti-racist. Those who use boycott to pressure Israel are similarly anti-racist.”

Chair of the SPSC, Mick Napier, said: “We have Jews and gentiles in our membership. There is no trace of anti-semitism in what we do."