To read the initial critique of Scottish pro-Palestinian activism that Kevin McKenna has had published in an increasingly desperate Glasgow Herald, is to encounter a portrait sketched in stark caricature: a world where political dissent is merely the affectation of the wealthy, and solidarity a “Brucie Bonus” for the bored bourgeoisie. Yet, history – and indeed, current affairs – rarely submit to such tidy, judgmental narratives. A closer inspection reveals that the motivations and language of these activists are neither so simple nor so easily dismissed as mere ‘anti -Jewish hatred disguised by a bespoke keffiyeh.’
McKenna’s primary indictment rests on a sweeping conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism – a maneuver both politically expedient and as intellectually strained as Reform members complaining about criminality in other political parties. To reject Zionism is not, by necessity, to reject the individual Jew or to negate Judaism in any way. It is to reject a specific, 20th-century political ideology that posits the necessity of a Jewish state in historic Palestine, often at the expense of its native inhabitants. Across the political spectrum, including among numerous Jewish anti-Zionist voices, the distinction is rigorously maintained: one may condemn the policies of the State of Israel without harboring prejudice against a people. To insist otherwise is to demand an impossible silence, implying that the political actions of a state must be rendered immune from criticism for fear of causing offense to every member of a global religious and ethnic group. It has been difficult watching McKenna become someone more interested in a kind of pretence of semantic jousting than a journalist distilling truth as he was once a journalistic standard-bearer. His increasing hatred of firstly Nicola Sturgeon and the government of Scotland has been pouring onto his page as thick and fast as sickly Christmas spiced drinks at the Herald Old Hacks Christmas do- and it is a stain on a career that was once pristine.
The Language of Law: From Insult to Indictment
The most dramatic dismissal in his article concerns the use of the term “genocide,” which he casts as a deliberately hurtful exaggeration. Yet, this language is not plucked from the realm of hyperbolic Doublet chatter over a few pint chasers; it is now firmly rooted in the precincts of international law. The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the UN’s highest judicial body, found in early 2024 that the case brought against Israel concerning its conduct in Gaza was “plausible” under the 1948 Genocide Convention.
The term is, therefore, not a mere insult but a statement of legal concern, invoking the most serious international treaty designed to prevent mass atrocities. Activists and political figures who use the term are aligning themselves with a formal legal process that cites specific prohibited acts, including the deliberate infliction of conditions “calculated to bring about [a group’s] physical destruction.” To dismiss this as Jew-baiting is to ignore the gravity and complexity of the global legal and humanitarian consensus.
The Political Posture: Due Process and Principled Dissent
The Holyrood motion signed by former First Ministers Nicola Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf, which McKenna derided as elite “posturing,” concerned itself with the wellbeing and due process of hunger strikers. The Scottish Parliament Motion S6M-20060 was primarily focused on the human rights of prisoners who had been held on remand for extended periods without trial. This stance is a routine expression of concern for civil liberties, a long-established tradition of the political Left. The figures involved were expressing solidarity with a principle – opposition to the UK’s complicity in the arms trade via companies like Elbit Systems – which has been a consistent policy position of their respective parties (SNP and Scottish Greens). To reduce this political calculation to a mere bid for social credibility is to ignore the actual policy differences that motivate their action.
The Slogan’s Shadow: Liberation, Not Extermination
McKenna’s (and the Israeli Government’s) accusation that “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free” is an unequivocal call for Jewish annihilation misrepresents the historical and political context. For many Palestinians and their supporters, this is a decades-old rallying cry for equality and self-determination across the entire territory, reflecting the plight of those who face occupation, blockade, or legal inequality. It is the articulation of a desire to supersede the current system of ethnic stratification with one where all inhabitants – Palestinian and Jew – live in freedom and dignity. To impose only the most sinister interpretation is to reject the possibility of a political solution that does not involve the continued dominance of one group over another.
In the end, the so called “Scottish elites” criticised are engaged in a form of political theatre, certainly, but one that is driven by deeper anxieties and long-held beliefs about human rights and global justice. They may possess a certain je ne sais quoi, but their activism, when measured by the standards of international law and political history, possesses a plausibility that is **anything but trifling.**
McKenna’s narrative, in its theatrical dismissal of activists as mere accessories to a political fad, reveals its true, lamentable aim: not incisive cultural critique, but a furious, desperate personal vendetta. This piece, draped in the worn cloak of intellectual judgment, is just his latest, but most vituperative addition to a body of work that has strayed far from the sharp, nuanced essays that marked his early career.
Where once there was insight, there is now only the relentless hammer of grievance. The sustained, almost pathological focus on former First Ministers, particularly Nicola Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf, suggests that the author’s primary target is not actually the complexities of the Middle East (of which he shows little understanding), but the remnants of the Scottish independence movement and its political leadership. The righteous anger, ostensibly aimed at the supposed hypocrisy of the “West End Leftie,” is, in reality, a thinly veiled vehicle for projecting the author’s own private political frustrations onto the public stage.
The essay thus ceases to be a serious contribution to the debate on antisemitism or political hypocrisy. It devolves into a species of polemic better suited to the shrill, reactive landscape of platforms like GB News or the coarse, reductive language of a Reform Party leaflet. McKenna and The Herald would be better stepping back from that precipice.
The tragedy here is one of wasted talent. By allowing his personal difficulties and political animus against the architects of the independence movement to commandeer his pen, McKenna sacrifices clarity for spite. The distinction between a legitimate political critique and a furious, self-serving outburst vanishes entirely. What remains is the sound of a once-incisive voice, now merely screaming, less concerned with the truth of the matter than with settling his strangely perceived old, cold scores in the most public and least dignified manner possible. His latest piece concludes not with a resolution of its themes, but with the hollow echo of a man undone by his own unrelenting bitterness.
