Margaret Hodge to be met with anti-Israel demonstrators at Scottish Parliament

Jewish Labour MP Dame Margaret Hodge will be met with anti-Israel protesters when she visits the Scottish Parliament on Friday afternoon.

The veteran politician will take part in a conversation with the Parliament’s presiding officer Ken McIntosh, to discuss her experience of antisemitism, in and outside of the Labour Party.

This comes after Hodge clashed with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, calling him “an antisemite and a racist” in parliament, over his handling of the antisemitism row. Her remarks provoked a furious reaction, and led to the initiation of disciplinary proceedings, which were later dropped. She likened the action to the persecution faced by Jews in Nazi Germany, saying she felt “as if they were coming for me”.

The Labour MP will be met by protesters outside the Edinburgh parliament, in a demonstration organised by the city’s branch of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (SPSC). They will hold banners and flyers opposing against her presence.

The SPSC say they will protest her presence at Holyrood, due of her membership of Labour Friends of Israel and her “support of Israel’s ongoing and widely reported abuse of Palestinian children”.

Spokesman Mick Napier said she “accuses supporters of Palestine of antisemitism”, adding that she “unfit to appear on any public platform”.

He said, she also “has a shameful record of covering up sexual abuse and smearing the victims who spoke up; she is reprising that role by falsely accusing of anti-Semitism those who stand for Palestine.”