JOHN Mason, Glasgow Shettleston MSP has been expelled from the SNP.

The MSP had been suspended over a social media post where he said there was no genocide in Gaza.

Following a disciplinary process Mason has now been expelled from the party.

Mason had posted on X: “There is no genocide. If Israel had wanted to commit genocide, they would have killed many many more.”

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The comment prompted outrage form many in the SNP.

He has now been kicked out of the party after a hearing on Saturday of the Member Conduct Committee.

In another social media post, the long-serving Glasgow politician, who has been a councillor and an MP representing communities in the east end revealed the sanction he had received.

he said: "Very disappointed to be expelled from the SNP over my comments on Israel, Gaza, and whether or not there has been genocide.

"I continue to believe that we should be able to tolerate a variety of views within the Party as long as we are all committed to Scottish independence."

He stood by his comments following the expulsion and said there is a difference between acts of war and genocide.

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Speaking on the BBC, Mason said: I do not think Israel has committed genocide, there is a war going on,

“lives have been lost, desperately sadly, as they have been in Ukraine, as they have been in every war.

“But there is a difference between war and genocide and to say every war is genocide is not the way we use that word.”

The MSP will now continue at Holyrood as an independent until 2006, when he intends to step down.

He said he felt the committee hadalready  made their minds up.

“When I had the meeting on Saturday with the committee most of the time was spend on discussing what is genocide.

“I think they had made up their minds that Israel has committed genocide, no matter what the evidence is, so I didn’t feel there was a lot of sympathy for me in the room.

“I totally regret the loss of life, but we don’t tend to say the bombing of German cities was genocide, we don’t tend to say that Hiroshima was genocide.

“These were acts of war, maybe disproportionate, but genocide is a very serious word and we use it of the Jews in the second world war, we use it of Ukrainians in Holodomor and Rwanda ad elsewhere and I think, to just mix up the words genocide and war is not accurate”

John Mason has been MSP for Shettleston since 2011.

Previously he was MP for Glasgow East from 2008 to 2010 having won the seat from Labour in a by-election.

 

Before that, he was a councillor for Garrowhill and then Baillieston from 1998 to 2008.

He also defied the party by voting against the bill to bring in buffer zones outside health facilities for anti-abortion protests.

He later joined a protest outside Holyrood as the law came into force.