A Scottish National Party politician has written a formal letter to ‘unreservedly apologise” after an ‘accidental’ retweet of an anti-Semitic post on Twitter.
Following a complaint by Scottish Jews to the Scottish National Party (SNP) Sandra White, a member of the Scottish Parliament, penned a personal letter in response.
White, an MSP for Glasgow Kelvin in the Scottish Parliament, re-posted an image which depicts a large pig with the word ‘Rothschild’ across it. Above the word is a picture of a bank with a red star of David, whilst Piglets are shown suckling the larger pig. Each piglet is shown to represent an international actor, including Israel, ISIS and America.
Her party initially said it had been “re-tweeted in error”, had been removed and that she “apologises for any offence caused.”
However, after Scottish Council of Jewish Communities (SCoJeC) wrote to the SNP to show concern over the “grotesque caricature”, White responded a formal letter on Thursday with an apology addressed to SCoJeC Director Ephraim Borowski.
She said she “would like to take this opportunity to apologise unreservedly for the offence that has been caused by my accidental retweet of this offensive image, which I too find repellent and offensive.”
After outlining it was done unintentionally, she said she was “horrified to learn that I had done so.”
“There is nothing that happens in Israel or Palestine that can be justification for any racial or religious hatred.”
She adds, that she has a “love of tolerance for all peoples”, and that she recently visited the Jewish Archives Centre in Glasgow where “I saw first-hand the unease contribution that the Jewish community has made to the Scotland in recent years.”
A petition was also set up calling for “Sandra White MSP to resign following her racist tweet.”